Countrymen,
My heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
(V. v. 33.)
We need not bemoan his fate: he is happy in it: indeed there is nothing that he could live for in the world of the Triumvirs, and this is what he himself desires:
My bones would rest,
That have but labour’d to attain this hour.
(V. v. 41.)
At the side of this rare and lofty nature, we see the kindred figure of his wife, similar in her noble traits, similar in her experiences, the true mate of his soul. Their relations are sketched in the merest outline, or, to be more correct, are implied rather than sketched. Only in some eighty lines of one scene do we see them together and hear them exchange words. In only one other scene does Portia appear, when we witness her tremors on the morning of the assassination. And in a third we hear of her death in detached notices, which, with the comments they call forth, barely amount to twenty lines. Yet the impression made is indelible and overpowering, not only of the lady’s own character, but of the perfect union in which she and Brutus lived. There is no obtrusion of their love: it does not exhale in direct professions. On her part, the claim to share his troubles, the solicitude for his success, the distraction because of his absence and danger; on his, the acceptance of her claim, two brief outbursts of adoration—and his reticence at her death. For he is not the man to wear his heart on his sleeve; and the more his feelings are stirred the less inclined is he to prate of them. Just as after slaying Caesar though “he loved him well,” he never alludes to the anguish he must have endured, so after his “Farewell, Portia,” he turns to the claims of life (“Well, to our work alive!”), and never even in soliloquy refers to her again. Even in the first pang of bereavement, the one hint of grief it can extort from him is the curt retort, “No man bears sorrow better.” We might fail to recognise all that it meant for him if we did not see his misery reflected in the sympathy and consternation of other men; in the hesitating reluctance of Messala, to break, as he thinks, the news; in the dismay of Cassius and his wonder at Brutus’ self-control. Cassius indeed cannot but recur to it despite the prohibition, “Speak no more of her.” When they have sat down to business his thoughts hark back to the great loss: “Portia, art thou gone?” “No more, I pray you,” repeats Brutus, who cannot brook the mention of her, and he plunges into the business of the hour.
And this woman, of whom Brutus felt that he was unworthy, and prayed to be made worthy, noble and devoted as himself, is involved too in his misfortunes. On her also a greater load is laid than she can bear. He is drawn by his political, and she by her domestic ideal into a position that overstrains the strength of each. She demands, as in Plutarch, though perhaps with father less of the dignity of the Roman matron and rather more of the yearning of the affectionate wife, to share in her husband’s secrets. She does this from no curiosity, intrusiveness or jealousy, but from her unbounded love and her exalted conception of the marriage tie. And she is confident that she can bear her part in her husband’s cares.