Roma patietur, quod recusant belluae.
In the scene between Caesar and Antony the resemblances are less marked in detail, partly owing to the somewhat different role assigned to the second speaker, but they are there; and the general tendency, from the self-conscious monologue of Caesar with which it opens, to the dialogue in which he gives expression to his doubts, is practically the same in both plays.
And these episodes are of some importance in view of their subsequent as well as their previous history. Though neither entirely original nor entirely relevant, they seem, perhaps because of their comparative fitness for the stage, to have made a great impression at the time. It has been suggested that they were not without their influence on Shakespeare when he came to write his Julius Caesar: a point the discussion of which may be reserved. It is certain that they supplied Alexander, though he may also have used Grévin and even Muretus, with the chief models and materials for certain scenes in his tragedy on the same subject. Thus, he too presents Caesar and Antony in consultation, and the former prefaces this interchange of views with a high-flown declaration of his greatness. Thus, too, the substance of their talk is to a great extent adapted from Garnier and diluted in the process. Compare the similar versions of the apology that Caesar makes for his action. In Alexander he exclaims:
The highest in the heaven who knows all hearts,
Do know my thoughts as pure as are their starres,
And that (constrain’d) I came from forraine parts
To seeme uncivill in the civill warres.
I mov’d that warre which all the world bemoanes,
Whil’st urged by force to free my selfe from feares;
Still when my hand gave wounds, my heart gave groanes;