Suetonius, Divus Iulius, 82.
Context. After his return from Spain (Sept. 45 B.C.), Caesar was busy with the reconstruction of the Senate, the completion of his vast buildings in Rome, and with other far-reaching projects. But during these months the clouds of ill-will were gathering and threatening him on every side. A conspiracy was formed, of which C. Cassius, ‘a lean and hungry man,’ of a bitter and jealous disposition, seems to have been the real instigator. He persuaded Brutus, a student of life chiefly in books, that liberty could only be gained by murder, and at last it was resolved that the deed should be done on the Ides (15th) of March.
8 graphio (γραφίον = scriptorium) = a writing-style.
12 quo honestius caderet, cf. Ovid, Fasti ii. 833 (of Lucretia):
Tunc quoque iam moriens ne non procumbat honeste
Respicit, haec etiam cura cadentis erat.
16 Καὶ σὺ τέκνον; there seems to be no authority for attributing the words Et tu Brute? to Caesar. Shakespeare found them in an earlier play.
The Murder of Caesar. ‘It is the most brutal and the most pathetic scene that profane history has to record; it was, as Goethe has said, the most senseless deed that ever was done. It was wholly useless, for it did not and could not save Rome from monarchy. The deed was done by a handful of men, who, pursuing a phantom liberty and following the lead of a personal hatred, slew the one man who saw the truth of things.’—W. F.