Mark Antony had been tribune in 49 b.c. when Pompey and the Senate were trying to force Julius Caesar to come to Italy without his army. Mark Antony and his fellow tribune did what they could to block senatorial action, then fled to Caesar's army, claiming they were in danger of their lives. Since tribunes were inviolate and might not be harmed, Caesar had the excuse he needed to cross the Rubicon with his army.
While Caesar was in Greece and Egypt fighting the civil war, Mark Antony held the fort in Rome itself and didn't do a very good job of it.
Caesar continued to value him for his absolute loyalty, however, and they remained together to the end.
And then a voice calls Caesar's name. It is a soothsayer, a man who foresees the future. This time his message is a simple one:
—Act I, scene ii, line 18
To understand the matter of "the ides" we must consider the Roman calendar, which must set some sort of record for inconvenience.
Each of the Roman months has three key dates and the other days are defined as "so many days before the such-and-such key date." Nor are the key dates regularly spaced or quite the same from month to month.
The first day of each month is the "calends" of that month.
Not long after the calends come the "nones." The nones fall on the fifth day of January, February, April, June, August, September, November, and December, and on the seventh day of March, May, July, and October.
The word "nones" means "nine" because it falls nine days before the third key date, the "ides," where the nine days count the day of the ides itself. The ides, therefore, fall on the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and on the thirteenth day of the other months.
From all this we gather that the "ides of March" is what we could call March 15 today. The Lupercalian festival, which falls on February 15, is not, however, on the "ides of February," for that date would be what we now call February 13.
Calmly, Caesar ignores the mystic warning and passes on to the festival. The incident of the soothsayer is not a Shakespearean invention, but is referred to in Plutarch.
That, of course, does not necessarily make it authentic. The event of the ides of March was so dramatic and so clearly a turning point of history that numerous fables arose afterward of all sorts of supernatural omens and forebodings preceding it. The incident of the soothsayer is only the most restrained and dramatically satisfying one of them.
After Caesar and his party pass on, two men remain behind: Brutus and Cassius. Cassius asks if Brutus intends to watch the festival and Brutus says he won't, for:
—Act I, scene ii, lines 28-29
No, he is not gamesome (that is, "merry" or "gay"). The Romans, somehow, usually aren't in literature. They are generally presented as grave, portentous, dignified men, given to declamations in high-sounding phrases, and that is exactly how Brutus is presented.
He is Marcus Junius Brutus, born in 85 b.c., and therefore just past forty at this time.
Brutus was the "Republican" most idealized by later historians, but he was by no means an admirable character in real life.
To begin with, he was a nephew of Cato, one of Caesar's most obdurate and steadfast enemies. It is not surprising, then, that Brutus was also an enemy of Caesar's to begin with. Indeed, he fought on Pompey's side in Greece and was taken prisoner when Pompey was defeated.
Caesar, however, followed a consistent policy of leniency toward his enemies, feeling, perhaps, that in this way he converted them to friends and healed the wounds inflicted by civil war. So Brutus was pardoned and set free.
The policy seemed to have worked in Brutus' case, for he behaved as though he were converted from a Pompeian into a sincere Caesarian. When Caesar went to Africa to take care of the senatorial armies there, those had, as one of their most important leaders, Cato, who was Brutus' uncle. And yet Brutus remained one of Caesar's lieutenants and served him loyally in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (in what is now northern Italy).
Later on, crucially and fatally, he abandoned Caesar once again. The later idealization of Brutus has him acting out of conviction and principle, but a glance at his career before the opening scenes of Julius Caesar would make it seem that he was, rather, a self-serving turncoat.
Brutus is unwilling that his lack of gamesomeness should interfere with Cassius' pleasures. He says:
—Act I, scene ii, lines 30-31
Cassius' full name is Gaius (or Caius) Cassius Longinus, and he is a capable soldier. He went with Crassus to the East as second-in-command. After the disastrous defeat which almost destroyed the Roman army, thanks in good part to Crassus' incapacity, Cassius took over and brought what was left of the army safely back to Roman territory.
He was also with Pompey at first, but after Pompey's defeat he reassessed the situation. He had not been captured, but it seemed to him that Caesar was sure to win, and Cassius intended to be on the winning side. He followed Caesar into Asia Minor and threw himself on the conqueror's mercy. Caesar pardoned him and let him serve under him.
Cassius married Junia, the sister of Brutus, and was, therefore, Brutus' brother-in-law.
But now that Brutus makes ready to leave Cassius, Cassius gently restrains him. He has a use for Brutus and to serve that use he begins, carefully, to seduce him with praise. He tells Brutus that he is too modest and does not sufficiently value himself, saying:
—Act I, scene ii, lines 35-38
Somehow the general idealization of Brutus is such that most of those who read or see this play imagine that Brutus is presented in heroic colors; and, indeed, the play is often produced with Brutus as the hero. Yet a close reading seems to show that Shakespeare is utterly out of sympathy with Brutus and makes him rather a despicable character.
Cassius bemoans Brutus' modesty, but there is no modesty in Brutus as portrayed by Shakespeare. Brutus always listens complacently to those who praise him, and praises himself often enough. Nor does Cassius for a moment really believe that Brutus is modest, for in the rest of the scene his attempt to win over Brutus to a desired line of action is pitched entirely to Brutus' overweening vanity.
Cassius' smoothly scheming flattery is interrupted by the sound of shouting in the distance, and Brutus cries out:
—Act I, scene ii, lines 79-80
The word "king" had a dread sound to Romans throughout their great days, a dread that dated back to the hated Tarquin (see page I-211). The tale of Tarquin was a heritage of every Roman schoolboy, as the tale of George III is of every American schoolboy, and a stanch republicanism was inculcated in the former case as it is in the latter.
Then too, in the two centuries preceding Julius Caesar's period of power, Rome had been more or less continuously at war with the various Hellenistic nations of the eastern Mediterranean, all of which were ruled by kings. Kings were the enemy and were therefore hated; and the kings were always defeated by the Roman republicans, so that the institution of monarchy had the aura of defeat about it.