This Month's Julius Caesar Feature >>

Brutus, however, is ambitious in the sense of being divided between two visions of the future. Brutus has no complaint against Caesar as he is, but fears what Caesar might become if the people and the Senate crown him as Rome's king. "He would be crown'd;/How that might change his nature, there's the question" (II, i., ll.12-13), as Brutus poses it to himself. Unlike Cassius and the others, Brutus does not act out of personal envy or resentment over past wrongs, but out of fear for the future of the Roman Republic. For the sake of Rome, Brutus takes personal responsibility for the murder of its ruler, bathing his hands in Caesar's blood as an open acknowledgment of his deed. But after the tyrannicide is done, Brutus continues to be plagued by doubts and haunted by great Caesar's ghost. Trying to straddle the present and the future, Brutus acts irrationally, making a series of self-defeating political and military blunders.