[572] See the Life of Antonius, c. 70.
[573] The verse is from the Medea of Euripides (v. 332), in which Medea Is cursing her faithless husband Jason. The educated Romans were familiar with the Greek dramatists, whom they often quoted. (Compare the Life of Pompeius, c. 78.) Appian says that Brutus intended to apply this line to Antonius (Civil Wars, iv. 130).
The other verse, which Volumnius forgot, was remembered by somebody else, if it be the verse of which Florus (iv. 7) has recorded the substance, “that virtue is not a reality, but a name.” Dion Cassius (xlvii. 49, and the note of Reimarus) also has recorded two Greek verses which Brutus is said to have uttered; but he does not mention the verse which Plutarch cites. The substance of the two verses cited by Dion is this:
“Poor virtue, empty name, whom I have serv’d
As a true mistress; thou art fortune’s slave.”
Volumnius might not choose to remember these verses, as Drumann suggests, in order to save the credit of his friend.
[574] See c. 11, and the Life of the younger Cato, c. 65, 73.
[575] Brutus was forty-three years of age when he died. Velleius (ii. 72) says that he was in his thirty-seventh year, which is a mistake.
The character of Brutus requires a special notice. It is easy enough to write a character of a man, but not easy to write a true one. Michelet (Histoire de la Revolution Française, ii. 545), speaking of the chief actors of the revolution in 1789. ’90, ’91, says: “We have rarely given a judgment entire, indistinct, no portrait properly speaking; all, almost all, are unjust; resulting from a mean which is taken between this and that moment in a person’s life, between the good and the bad, neutralising the one by the other, and making both false. We have judged the acts, as they present themselves, day by day, hour by hour. We have given a date to our judgments; and this has allowed us often to praise men, whom at a later time we shall have to blame. Criticism, forgetful and harsh, too often condemns beginnings which are laudable, having in view the end which it knows, of which it has a view beforehand. But we do not choose to know this end; whatever this man may do to-morrow, we note for his advantage the good which he does to-day: the end will come soon enough.” This is the true method of writing history; this is the true method of judging men. Unfortunately we cannot trace the career of many individuals with that particularity of date and circumstance which would enable us to do justice. Plutarch does not draw characters in the mass in the modern way: he gives us both the good and the bad, in detail: but with little regard sometimes to time and circumstance. He has treated Brutus with partiality: he finds only one act in his life to condemn (chap. 46). The great condemnation of Brutus is, that acting in the name of virtue, he did not know what it was; that fighting for his country, he was fighting for a party; his Roman republic was a republic of aristocrats; his people was a fraction of the Roman citizens; he conceived no scheme for regenerating a whole nation: he engaged in a death struggle in which we can feel no sympathy. His name is an idle abused theme for rhetoric; and his portrait must be drawn, ill or well, that the world may be disabused.
Drumann (Geschichte Roms, Junii, p. 34) has carefully collected the acts of Brutus; and he has judged him severely, and, I think, truly.