NOTES

ACT I. SCENE I

Line 17. Soles. A pun on "souls." Cf. The Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 120, and Glossary.

41. Triumph. This triumph was decreed to Cæsar for his victory over the sons of Pompey, at Munda, in Spain, 45 B. C. In making the triumph and the festival of the Lupercalia occur at the same time, Shakespeare departs from historical fact, for the triumph took place four months prior to the festival. A triumph wherein a general was escorted in solemn procession through a breach made in the walls of the city was generally decreed to a commander after a notable victory. (See footnote, p. 62.)

52. Great Pompey. Cneius Pompeius Magnus, a member of the first Triumvirate, was born 106 B. C.; died 48 B. C. During his lifetime he enjoyed three triumphs: (1) for his victories in Africa, 81 B. C.; (2) for his victories in Spain, 71 B. C.; (3) for his victories in Asia, 61 B. C. 55. Tiber. The river on which Rome is located.

73. Capitol. The Capitol was a temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. Shakespeare thought the senate met there. (See note I, iii. 36, and III. i.)

77. Feast of Lupercal. The Lupercalia, a Roman festival, was celebrated on February 15th in the Lupercal, the cave in which Romulus and Remus were said to have been nurtured by a she-wolf. This festival was originally a purification ceremony of the Palatine city, in which human victims were sacrificed. Later, dogs and goats were the victims, and the celebrants ran around the walls of the old Palatine striking all whom they met with thongs cut from the skins of the slaughtered animals. (See note I. ii. 3.) The word February is derived from the Latin februum, a goat-skin.

ACT I. SCENE IÌ

Antony, for the course. Prepared for running the course. Antony was the high priest of the god Lupercus.

3. Stand you directly in Antonius' way. "Many noble women, and gentlewomen also, go of purpose to stand in their way, and to put forth

164

their hands to be stricken

persuading themselves that, being with child, they shall have good delivery; and so being barren, that it will make them to conceive with child." Plutarch. (See note, I. i. 77.) 40. Passions. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, III. ii. 107.

99. Endure the winter's cold.

Cæsar endeavored by his active life to build up the infirm constitution which it is said he possessed in his youth. (Plutarch's "Cæsar.'')

114. Eneas.

Troy

Anchises. Eneas was the son

of Anchises and Venus. In the Eneid, Virgil tells of the capture of Troy by the Greeks, after a ten years' siege. He relates how Æneas carried Anchises, his father, from the burning city.

119. He had a fever. 66 Concerning the constitution of his body, he was lean, white, and soft-skinned, and often subject to headache, and otherwhile to the falling-sickness, the which took him the first time, as it is reported, in Corduba, a city of Spain." (Plutarch's "Cæsar.")

136. Colossus. The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the seven wonders of the world. It was a large bronze image 105 feet high, and its feet rested, one upon each of the two moles which formed the entrance to the harbor. Ships passed full sail between its legs, and few men could span one of its fingers. It was begun in 300 B. C. and completed in 288 B. C.

152. The great flood. According to mythology, the flood, which happened in the time of Deucalion, son of Prometheus, was brought about by Jupiter in consequence of man's impiety. Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, escaped to the top of Mount Parnassus, and, by the advice of the oracle of Themis, repaired the loss of mankind by throwing behind them the bones of their grandmother, which were the stones of the earth. Those thrown by Deucalion became men; those thrown by his wife, women. This deluge is supposed to have occurred in Thessaly 1503 B. C.

159. There was a Brutus. Lucius Junius Brutus, the Consul, 509 B. C., son of Marcus Junius and Tarquinia, sister of Tarquinius Superbus, was one of the Romans who accomplished the expulsion of the Tarquins. He loved his country even better than he loved his children, and condemned two of his sons to death for attempting to restore the Tarquinian dynasty. According to Pomponius Atticus, the genealogist, Marcus Junius Brutus, the Brutus of the play, known also as Quintus Caepio Brutus, was descended from a third son of Lucius Junius Brutus, the Consul. 178. The games. This refers to the festival of the Lupercalia. (See note, I. i. 77.)

185. Cicero. Shakespeare obtained no suggestion from Plutarch for the description he here gives of Cicero.

66

258. Falling sickness. When Cæsar was in Africa, before the battle of Thapsus, "the falling sickness took him whereunto he was given." (Plutarch's "Cæsar.") On another occasion, according to Plutarch, when he had offended not only the senate but the common people also, 'Cæsar, rising, departed home to his house, and tearing open his doublet-collar, making his neck bare, he cried aloud to his friends that his throat was ready to offer to any man that would come and cut it. Notwithstanding it is reported, that afterwards, to excuse his folly, he imputed it to his disease, saying, 'their wits are not perfect which have this disease of the falling evil; when standing on their feet they speak to the common people, but are soon troubled with a trembling of their body, and a sudden dimness and giddiness.'''

270. Doublet. See Glossary. This is an anachronism, for the Romans did not wear doublets. (See note 258, above.)

292. It was Greek to me. This expression is said to have originated with Shakespeare.

294. Cæsar's images. The Tribunes, Flavius and Marullus, pulled down the images of Cæsar, which had been set up some time previously. This so incensed the Dictator that he summarily deprived them of their tribuneships.

327. Writings. "But for Brutus, his friends and countrymen, both by divers procurements and sundry rumours of the city and by many bills also, did openly call and procure him to do that he did." (Plutarch's "Brutus.'')

3. Sway of earth.

ACT I. SCENE III

Established order of the earth's movement. 15. Common slave. Slaves were employed to perform all kinds of menial work, and also to assist the state officers.

36. Capitol. The Capitol, which was one of the most imposing buildings in Rome, was situated on the Capitoline Hill. Shakespeare confuses the Capitol with the Curia Hostilia in the Forum, in which the senate usually assembled. On the occasion of Cæsar's murder, however, the senate met, not in the Capitol or in the Curia Hostilia, but in a portico in the Campus Martius, a short distance from the Forum.

49. Thunder-stone.

thunder.

Fabulously supposed to be the product of

70. Instruments of fear and warning. Intimations of approaching calamities.

75. The lion in the Capitol. Shakespeare thought that lions were housed in the Capitol at Rome, as they were in the Tower of London. 126. Pompey's porch. This shaded veranda was a fit rendezvous for conspirators.

143. Praetor's chair. Brutus' statue. "For under the image of his ancestor Junius Brutus (that drave the kings out of Rome) they wrote: 'O that it pleased the gods thou wert now alive, Brutus!' and again, 'that thou wert here among us now!' His tribunal or chair, where he gave audience during the time he was Praetor, was full of such bills: 'Brutus, thou art asleep, and are not Brutus indeed.'''

ACT II. SCENE I

1. Lucius. The character of Lucius and the affectionate relations between him and Brutus are due to Shakespeare's imagination.

2. Progress of the stars. This is an allusion to the constellation Libra-the Balance so called because when the sun enters it the days and nights are equal.

17. Danger. The argument of Brutus is this: "It is not in Cæsar's nature to be tyrannical. But then he has not yet tasted the delights of kingship. Sovereignty may entirely change his nature.'

ACT II. SCENE II

32. Cowards die many times. According to Plutarch this was the substance of one of Cæsar's sayings.

109. Welcome, Publius. "So when the day was come, Brutus went out of his house with a dagger by his side under his long gown, that nobody saw nor knew but his wife only. The other conspirators were all assembled at Cassius' house to bring his son into the market-place, who on that day did put on the man's gown, called toga-virilis, and from thence they came all in a troop together unto Pompey's porch, looking that Cæsar would straight come hither." (Plutarch's "Brutus."') The first and chiefest (misfortune) was Cæsar's came very late to the senate." (Plutarch's

119. Waited for. long tarrying, who "Brutus."")

ACT II. SCENE III

8. Security. Cf. Macbeth, III. V. 33.

16. Contrive. Cf. note 7, page 99.

ACT III. SCENE 1

The Capitol. (See note, I. i. 73 and I. iii. 36.) At this time the Curia Hostilia, the proper senate-house in the Forum, was undergoing extensive repairs and consequently the Senate had to meet in the Curia Pompeiana. Shakespeare has sacrificed historic accuracy to dramatic effect in assigning the location of Pompey's statue to the imaginary senate-house in the Capitol, instead of to its proper place in Pompey's theater.

8. What touches us. "Cæsar took it of him, but could never read it, though he many times attempted it, for the number of people that did salute him; but holding it still in his hand, keeping it to himself, went on withal in the senate-house." (Plutarch's "Cæsar.'')

47. Nor without cause. Only a real cause could induce Cæsar to grant a pardon.

53. Publius. A fictitious name given by Shakespeare to Cimber's brother.

60. The northern star. The Pole-star which never sets to inhabitants of the northern hemisphere. By it navigators determine latitudes.

74. Olympus. In Greek mythology Olympus was the chief seat of the gods who ruled the universe.

85. Publius. This character should not be confounded with Publius Cimber, nor with the son of Antony's sister. (See Introduction, p. 54.)

115. Pompey's basis. The base of Pompey's statue. The French removed this statue to the Colosseum in 1798, and there, amidst Italian pomp and French display, performed before it Voltaire's Mort de Cesar. 202. Close. Cf. Hamlet II. i. 43.

209. Princes. Deer-hunting, especially in enclosures, was, in the Middle Ages, a favorite pastime of kings.

230. Speak in the order. If the deceased was of illustrious rank, the funeral procession went through the Forum and stopped before the rostra, where a funeral oration was delivered. This practice was of great antiquity among the Romans.

268. Quartered. Cut to pieces.

271. Até, the daughter of Zeus, was the avenger of evil deeds; hence her character is almost the same as that of Nemesis.

273. Havoc. A. S. hafoc, a hawk. To cry "havoc❞—to cry "hawk," was probably a cry of encouragement to a hawk when let loose upon its prey.

286. He lies to-night. Octavius did not arrive in Rome till the following May. According to Plutarch, at this time he was in Apollonia, in Illyricum, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.