“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” opens Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, in which he promises not to praise Caesar or attack his killers, and then does both so skillfully that he turns the crowd of Rome against the men who murdered him.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen: The Full Speech
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Text based on the First Folio (1623), Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2, with modernized spelling and punctuation. This is the first part of Antony’s oration; he speaks again after the pause.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about “Friends, Romans, countrymen” for quick reference.
What “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” Means
The whole speech in plain English, before the line-by-line detail.
Antony asks the crowd for their attention: friends, Romans, fellow citizens, listen. He says he has come only to bury Caesar, not to praise him. People’s bad deeds are remembered after they die, while their good deeds are forgotten, and he says that is how it should be with Caesar too.
Brutus has told them Caesar was ambitious. If so, Antony says, it was a serious fault, and Caesar has paid for it. He speaks with the permission of Brutus and the others, who are all “honorable men.” But Caesar was his friend, loyal and fair to him.
Then Antony begins, quietly, to offer evidence. Caesar brought home prisoners whose ransoms filled Rome’s treasury, not his own pocket. He wept when the poor cried. At the festival of the Lupercal, Antony offered him a crown three times, and three times he refused it. Was that ambition? Each time, Antony adds that Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and that Brutus is an honorable man.
He insists he is not trying to prove Brutus wrong, only to say what he knows. The people loved Caesar once, and with good reason; what stops them from mourning him now? Good judgment has fled to the animals, and men have lost their reason. Then he stops, overcome: his heart is in the coffin with Caesar, and he must wait until it comes back to him.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Where the Speech Comes in Julius Caesar
The speech is the turning point of the play.
Julius Caesar has just been stabbed to death in the Senate by a group of conspirators led by Cassius and Brutus, Caesar’s own friend, who believed Caesar meant to make himself king. Brutus, confident that his reasons are good, lets Antony speak at the funeral, provided he does not blame the conspirators.
Brutus speaks first, in plain prose, and wins the crowd with a famous defense: “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” The people cheer him, and one even shouts, “Let him be Caesar.” Then he leaves, and Antony, carrying Caesar’s body, goes up to speak to a crowd that is ready to hear no harm of Brutus.
By the end of Antony’s oration, which continues after this pause with Caesar’s will and his wounds, the same crowd is rioting through the streets, hunting the conspirators. Brutus and Cassius flee Rome, and civil war follows. For more of Shakespeare’s Roman and history plays, see our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
Themes
The three big ideas the speech turns on.
The Power of Persuasion
The speech is the most famous demonstration in literature of how words can move a crowd. In a few minutes, Antony reverses the mood of Rome without ever openly contradicting Brutus. The play shows that in politics, the person who controls the story controls the city.
Honor
Brutus’s whole defense rests on his honor: he killed his friend for Rome, not for himself. Antony attacks exactly that. By calling Brutus “an honorable man” again and again, next to evidence that Caesar was not ambitious, he makes the word itself sound hollow, and with it Brutus’s reason for the murder.
Ambition
The conspirators justified the murder by Caesar’s ambition. Antony answers with three pieces of evidence: the ransoms paid into the public treasury, Caesar’s tears for the poor, and the crown he refused three times. “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”
Form and Language
How the speech is built, and why it works.
Repetition That Turns to Irony
The word “honorable” appears five times in these 35 lines. The first time, it sounds sincere. By the fourth and fifth, set beside proof of Caesar’s generosity, it sounds sarcastic. Antony never says Brutus is dishonorable; the repetition says it for him.
Saying What He Says He Won’t Say
Antony says he has come “not to praise” Caesar, and then praises him. He says, “I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,” and then disproves it. This technique, drawing attention to something by claiming not to mention it, is called apophasis, and it lets Antony attack while appearing to keep his promise to Brutus.
Questions for the Crowd
“Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?” “Was this ambition?” Antony asks questions and lets the crowd answer them silently. The conclusion feels like the people’s own, which makes it far more powerful than an accusation.
Verse Against Prose
Brutus addresses the crowd in careful, balanced prose, an appeal to reason. Antony answers in blank verse, full of feeling, tears, and a dramatic pause. The contrast is part of the drama: reason spoke first, and emotion won.
A Closer Reading: The Pause
The most effective moment in the speech is the one where Antony says nothing at all.
After building his case line by line, Antony stops: “Bear with me; / My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, / And I must pause till it come back to me.” It may be real grief. Caesar was his friend. But it is also perfectly timed. He has planted his questions, and now he gives the crowd a moment to answer them among themselves. In the play, they do exactly that: the citizens begin to murmur that there is “much reason in his sayings” and that Caesar has been wronged.
That is the genius of the oration. Antony never tells the people what to think. He lets them feel they have reached the conclusion on their own, which makes it impossible to argue them out of it. Whether the tears are sincere or staged, the play does not say, and perhaps it does not matter. What it shows is that in a crowd, a silence placed at the right moment can say more than any argument, and that Brutus, who trusted reason to carry the day, never stood a chance.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” answered briefly.
What Does “Lend Me Your Ears” Mean?
“Listen to me” or “give me your attention.” Antony is asking the noisy crowd in the Forum to hear him out.
Who Says “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”?
Mark Antony, Caesar’s friend, at Caesar’s funeral in Act 3, scene 2 of Julius Caesar.
Why Does Antony Keep Calling Brutus “an Honorable Man”?
To make the phrase sound ironic. He has promised not to blame the conspirators, so he praises Brutus in words, while the evidence he gives about Caesar makes that praise sound more and more hollow.
What Does “The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them” Mean?
That people’s bad deeds are remembered long after they die, while their good deeds are forgotten, “interred with their bones.” Antony claims this will happen to Caesar, and then sets about making sure it does not.
Does Antony Keep His Promise to Brutus?
In words, yes: he never directly accuses the conspirators. In effect, no. By the end of his oration, the crowd is rioting and hunting them through the streets.
Related Reading
Three pages that take “Friends, Romans, countrymen” further.