Then Brutus wakes them all.
Lucius: The strings, my lord, are false.
Brutus: He thinks he is still at his instrument.
Lucius, awake!
And after questioning them as to whether they cried out in their sleep, or saw anything, he bids the boy sleep again (it is easy for tired boys to sleep at will in camp) and sends two of the others to Cassius to bid him get his forces on the way early and he would follow.
Brutus: Go and commend me to my brother Cassius;
Bid him set on his powers betimes before,
And we will follow.
Varro and Claudius: It shall be done, my lord.
For, being a wise soldier, as well as a brave and gentle one, he reckoned, no doubt, that it would be best to have a strong man in the rear until the field was actually reached, for the benefit of would-be deserters, and unconsidered trifles of country people-and maybe for another reason not totally disconnected with his erratic friend Cassius.
Just one more scene, and a very different one, before we hurry on to the end, as they have done to Philippi. It’s the only scene in which those two unlucky Romans, Cassius and Brutus, seem to score.
It is during the barney, or as Shakespeare calls it, the “parley” before the battle. Those parleys never seemed to do any good—except to make matters worse, if I might put it like that: it’s the same, under similar circumstances, right up to to-day. Enter on one side Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and their pals and army; and, on the other, Brutus and Cassius and the friends and followers of their falling fortunes.
Brutus: Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?
Octavius: Not that we love words better, as you do.
You see, Octavius starts it.
Brutus lays himself open: