Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
Dash him to pieces!
(IV. iii. 69.)
What does all this come to? That the superfine Brutus will not be guilty of extortion, but that Cassius may: and then Brutus will demand to share in the proceeds. All this distress and oppression are his doing, or at least the consequences of his deed, and he would wash his hands of these inevitable accompaniments. He would do this by using Cassius as his âme damnée while yet interfering in Cassius’ necessary measures with his moral rebukes.[179]
This of course is between Cassius and himself, and if Cassius chooses to submit, it is his own concern. But Brutus plays the Infallible to such purpose, that, what with his loftiness of view, his earnestness, and his marvellous fortitude, he obtains an authority over Cassius’ mind that has disastrous results. Though Cassius is both the better and the elder soldier, he must needs intermeddle with Cassius’ plan of campaign. Here, as so often, Shakespeare has no warrant for his most significant touch. Plutarch had said that Cassius, against his will, was overruled by Brutus to hazard their fortunes in a single battle. But that was afterwards, at Philippi. There is no hint that Cassius was opposed to the movement from Sardis to Philippi, and it is on this invented circumstance that Shakespeare lays most stress. In the play Brutus, in the teeth of his fellow generals’ disapproval, insists on their leaving their vantage ground on the hills, chiefly as it appears because he dislikes the impositions they are compelled to lay on the people round about:
They have grudged us contribution;