The Conspiracy and the Conspirators

Extract

The conspiracy which so tragically and so dramatically ended Caesar's life on the Ides of March, 44 b.c., is one of the best-known episodes of Roman history; for it has been given its tragic and dramatic setting by Shakespeare himself, who saw so clearly its tragic quality. Yet as we look back over two thousand years upon this incident, pregnant with fate, as it was, for Rome's and the western world's future, we tend naturally, I think, to regard with something of contempt the conspirators, many of them Caesar's friends, who could thus dare to dishonour friendship with their great friend's blood, and cloak envy and selfishness with hypocrisy's specious covering. Yet it must be remembered that sixty men, no less, were joined in this conspiracy; we cannot lightly condemn all of them for hypocrisy and spite; and even if our final verdict should be unfavourable, it is wrong to pass it without attempting to penetrate to some degree into the minds and motives of these men, to try to understand why they could, and thought they should, commit a crime so seemingly damnable.