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Julius Caesar Character Sketches

Brutus is a supporter of the Roman Republic who opposes dictatorship. He is manipulated into believing Caesar must die to preserve the republic, since Brutus fears Caesar wants to become dictator. Brutus truly believes Caesar's death will benefit Rome. He is torn between loyalty to his friend Caesar and allegiance to the state. Julius Caesar is a great Roman general who has recently returned in triumph but shows no inclination toward becoming dictator, declining the crown several times. However, he fails to separate his public and private lives and ignores threats to his life, believing himself eternal. Mark Antony claims allegiance to Brutus after Caesar's death to save himself. However, at Caesar's funeral, he persuades

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828 views

Julius Caesar Character Sketches

Brutus is a supporter of the Roman Republic who opposes dictatorship. He is manipulated into believing Caesar must die to preserve the republic, since Brutus fears Caesar wants to become dictator. Brutus truly believes Caesar's death will benefit Rome. He is torn between loyalty to his friend Caesar and allegiance to the state. Julius Caesar is a great Roman general who has recently returned in triumph but shows no inclination toward becoming dictator, declining the crown several times. However, he fails to separate his public and private lives and ignores threats to his life, believing himself eternal. Mark Antony claims allegiance to Brutus after Caesar's death to save himself. However, at Caesar's funeral, he persuades

Uploaded by

Ruqia Zahra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Brutus -  A supporter of the republic who believes strongly in a government

guided by the votes of senators. While Brutus loves Caesar as a friend, he


opposes the ascension of any single man to the position of dictator, and he
fears that Caesar aspires to such power. Brutus’s inflexible sense of honor
makes it easy for Caesar’s enemies to manipulate him into believing that
Caesar must die in order to preserve the republic. While the other
conspirators act out of envy and rivalry, only Brutus truly believes that
Caesar’s death will benefit Rome. Unlike Caesar, Brutus is able to separate
completely his public life from his private life; by giving priority to matters
of state, he epitomizes Roman virtue. Torn between his loyalty to Caesar and
his allegiance to the state, Brutus becomes the tragic hero of the play.

Julius Caesar -  A great Roman general and senator, recently returned to


Rome in triumph after a successful military campaign. While his good friend
Brutus worries that Caesar may aspire to dictatorship over the Roman
republic, Caesar seems to show no such inclination, declining the crown
several times. Yet while Caesar may not be unduly power-hungry, he does
possess his share of flaws. He is unable to separate his public life from his
private life, and, seduced by the populace’s increasing idealization and
idolization of his image, he ignores ill omens and threats against his life,
believing himself as eternal as the North Star.

Mark Antony - A friend of Caesar. Antony claims allegiance to Brutus and


the conspirators after Caesar’s death in order to save his own life. Later,
however, when speaking a funeral oration over Caesar’s body, he
spectacularly persuades the audience to withdraw its support of Brutus and
instead condemn him as a traitor. With tears on his cheeks and Caesar’s will
in his hand, Antony engages masterful rhetoric to stir the crowd to revolt
against the conspirators. Antony’s desire to exclude Lepidus from the power
that Antony and Octavius intend to share, hints at his own ambitious nature.

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