He does not hesitate, though this course will involve in ruin those who have generously spared him and given him the weapons against themselves. Not even for his country’s sake will he pause, though, with his prescient imagination, he sees in all their lurid details the horrors of the
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
(I. iii. 263.)
that must inevitably ensue.
And he effects his purpose, without any other help, by his wonderful address to the citizens. Perhaps nowhere else in History or Literature do we find the procedure of the demagogue of Genius set forth with such masterly insight. For Antony shows himself a demagogue of the most profligate description, but as undeniably the very genius of the art of moving men. Consider the enormous difficulties of his position. He is speaking under limitation and by permission before a hostile audience that will barely give him a hearing, and his task is to turn them quite round, and make them adore what they hated and hate what they adored. How does he set about it?
He begins with an acknowledgment and compliment to Brutus: “For Brutus’ sake I am beholding to you.” He disclaims the intention of even praising the dead. He cites the charge of ambition, but not to reply to it, merely to point out that any ambition has been expiated. But then he insinuates arguments on the other side: Caesar’s faithfulness and justice in friendship, the additions not to his private but to the public wealth that his victories secured, his pitifulness to the poor, his refusal of the crown. Really these things are no arguments at all. They have either nothing to do with the case, or are perfectly compatible with ambition, or may have been its very means or may have been meant to cloak it. Such indeed we know that in part at least they were. But that does not signify so far as Antony’s purpose is concerned. They were all matters well known to the public, fit to call forth proud and grateful and pleasing reminiscences of Caesar’s career. The orator has managed to praise Caesar while not professing to do so: if he does not disprove what Brutus said, yet in speaking what he does know, he manages to discredit Brutus’ authority. And now these regretful associations stirred, he can at any rate ask their tears for their former favourite. Have they lost their reason that they do not at least mourn for him they once loved? And here with a rhetorical trick, which, to his facile, emotional nature, may have also been the suggestion of real feeling, his utterance fails him; he must pause, for his “heart is in the coffin there with Caesar.”
We may be sure that whatever had happened to his heart his ear was intent to catch the murmurs of the crowd. They would satisfy him. Though he has not advanced one real argument, but has only played as it were on their sensations, their mood has changed. Some think Caesar has had wrong, some are convinced that he was not ambitious, all are now thoroughly favourable to Antony.
He begins again. And now he strikes the note of contrast between Caesar’s greatness yesterday and his impotence to-day. It is such a tragic fall as in itself might move all hearts to terror and pity. But what if the catastrophe were undeserved? Antony could prove that it was, but he will keep faith with the conspirators and refrain. Nevertheless he has the testament, though he will not read it, which, read, would show them that Caesar was their best friend.
Compassion, curiosity, selfishness are now enlisted on his side. Cries of “The will! The will!” arise. He is quick to take advantage of these. Just as he would not praise Caesar, yet did so all the same; so he refuses to read the will, for they would rise in mutiny—this is a little preliminary hint to them—if they heard that Caesar had made them his heirs.
Renewed insistence on the part of the mob, renewed coyness on the part of Antony; till at last he steps down from the pulpit, taking care to have a wide circle round him that as many as possible may see. But he does not read the will immediately. Partly with his incomparable eye to effect, partly out of the fullness of his heart (for the substance of his words is the same as in his private soliloquy), he stands rapt above the body. Caesar’s mantle recalls proud memories of the glory of Caesar and of Rome, the victory over the Barbarian.[185] And this mantle is pierced by the stabs of assassins, of Cassius, of Casca, of Brutus himself. He has now advanced so far that he can attack the man who was the idol of the mob but a few minutes before. And he makes his attack well. The very superiority of Brutus to personal claims, the very patriotism which none could appreciate better than Antony, and to which he does large justice when Brutus is no more, this very disinterestedness he turns against Brutus, and despite all he owes him, accuses him of black ingratitude. There is so much speciousness in the charge that it would be hard to rebut before a tribunal of sages: and when Antony makes his coup, withdrawing the mantle and displaying the mutilated corpse,