[IV.73] l. 80 The omission of the conjunction 'as' before expressions denoting result is a common usage in Shakespeare.
[IV.74] rascal counters: worthless money. 'Rascal' is properly a technical term for a deer out of condition. So used literally in As You Like It, III, iii, 58. 'Counters' were disks of metal, of very small intrinsic value, much used for reckoning. Cf. As You Like It, II, vii, 63; The Winter's Tale, IV, iii, 38. Professor Dowden comments aptly on what we have here: "Brutus loves virtue and despises gold; but in the logic of facts there is an irony cruel or pathetic. Brutus maintains a lofty position of immaculate honour above Cassius; but ideals, and a heroic contempt for gold, will not fill the military coffer, or pay the legions, and the poetry of noble sentiment suddenly drops down to the prosaic complaint that Cassius had denied the demands made by Brutus for certain sums of money. Nor is Brutus, though he worships an ideal of Justice, quite just in matters of practical detail."
[IV.75] "Whilst Brutus and Cassius were together in the city of Smyrna, Brutus prayed Cassius to let him have part of his money whereof he had great store.... Cassius's friends hindered this request, and earnestly dissuaded him from it; persuading him, that it was no reason that Brutus should have the money which Cassius had gotten together by sparing, and levied with great evil will of the people their subjects, for him to bestow liberally upon his soldiers, and by this means to win their good wills, by Cassius's charge. This notwithstanding, Cassius gave him the third part of this total sum."—Plutarch, Marcus Brutus.
[IV.76] l. 84 that brought | Ff give to l. 85.
[IV.77] brav'd: defied. The verb connotes bluster and bravado.
[IV.78] Plutus' Pope | Pluto's Ff.
[IV.79] Plutus (for the Folio reading see [note] on 'Antonio' for Antonius, I, ii, 5) is the old god of riches, who had all the world's gold in his keeping and disposal. Pluto was the lord of Hades.
[IV.80] humour. See [note, p. 60, l. 250].
[IV.81] Whatever dishonorable thing you may do, I will set it down to the caprice of the moment.
[IV.82] Cf. the words of Cassius, [I, ii, 176-177]. See also Troilus and Cressida, III, iii, 257. It was long a popular notion that fire slept in the flint and was awaked by the stroke of the steel. "It is not sufficient to carry religion in our hearts, as fire is carried in flintstones, but we are outwardly, visibly, apparently, to serve and honour the living God."—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, VII, xxii, 3.