Why did Brutus kill Julius Caesar?
Hi J. So many people before you have asked that same question and so many hypotheses have been put forward. I myself, being one of them. In February 44, Caesar showed clearly that he would never restore the republic that he had overthrown. He received the senators as a king (not rising from his seat when they entered the room), wanted himself to be crowned and had himself proclaimed dictator for ever. All this was extremely unrepublican, and Brutus decided that he had to act. Some 60 senators conspired to assasinate the dictator, and Brutus, who was close to Caesar, became one of the leaders of the plot. Brutus had shown that he had, to use a word of Cicero, ‘the courage of a man and the brains of child’. He had acted out of idealism; otherwise, he would have preferred to remain Caesar’s friend and be consul. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.71-c.135): Roman scholar and official, wrote a book called the Lives of the Twelve Ceasars and from which Shakespeare based his play Julius Caesar .
