Julius Caesar is a tragedy about the murder of the most powerful man in Rome by friends who believed they were saving the republic, and about how that murder, meant to end Caesar’s power, makes his name stronger than ever.
Written in 1599, it was one of the first plays performed at the new Globe theater, and its speeches, from “Beware the ides of March” to “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” are among the most quoted in English. This guide covers the plot act by act, the main characters, the themes, and the most famous lines, and ends with a reading of the one thing the conspirators could not kill. For the other plays, see our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Julius Caesar for quick reference.
Julius Caesar Study Guide
Every page on Julius Caesar, from scene-by-scene summaries to characters, themes, and famous lines.
Julius Caesar in Brief
The whole story in a few sentences, before the act-by-act detail.
Julius Caesar has returned to Rome in triumph, and some fear he means to make himself king. Cassius, who resents Caesar’s power, persuades the respected Brutus, Caesar’s friend, to join a conspiracy against him. Despite omens, warnings, and his wife’s fearful dream, Caesar goes to the Senate on the ides of March, where the conspirators stab him to death.
Brutus explains the murder to the people of Rome, and they cheer him. Then Caesar’s friend Mark Antony speaks at the funeral and turns the crowd against the conspirators, who flee the city. Antony joins with Caesar’s young heir, Octavius, to raise an army. At the battle of Philippi, Cassius and then Brutus take their own lives, and Antony praises Brutus as “the noblest Roman of them all.”
Julius Caesar Plot Summary, Act by Act
What happens in each of the play’s five acts.
Act 1: The Conspiracy Forms
Rome celebrates Caesar’s triumphant return from his victory over the sons of his rival Pompey, though two tribunes scold the crowd for forgetting Pompey so quickly. In a public procession, a soothsayer calls out a warning: “Beware the ides of March.” Caesar dismisses him as a dreamer. Cassius takes Brutus aside and works on him. Caesar is only a man, he argues, yet he now “doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus.” Offstage, the crowd roars, and Casca reports that Antony offered Caesar a crown three times, that Caesar refused it three times, and that he then fell down in a fit.
That night, a terrible storm fills Rome with strange sights. Cassius reads them as signs against Caesar, recruits Casca, and plans to have forged letters left where Brutus will find them, as if from citizens begging him to act.
Act 2: The Night Before
Sleepless in his orchard, Brutus reasons himself into the murder. Caesar has not yet abused his power, but he might once he is crowned, so he must be stopped now. One of the forged letters convinces him, and when the conspirators arrive, he agrees to lead them. He makes two fateful decisions: they will swear no oath, and they will not kill Mark Antony. They must be sacrificers, not butchers: “Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods, / Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.” After they leave, his wife, Portia, begs to know what is troubling him, and shows him a wound she has given herself in the thigh to prove her strength.
It is now the ides of March. Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, has dreamed of his statue running with blood, and she persuades him to stay home. But the conspirator Decius arrives and reinterprets the dream as a good omen, then tells Caesar that the Senate means to offer him a crown that day and might think him afraid if he stays away. Caesar goes.
Act 3: The Murder and the Funeral
At the Senate, the conspirators surround Caesar, pretending to plead for a banished man. Caesar refuses, declaring himself “constant as the northern star.” Casca strikes first, “Speak, hands, for me!”, and the others follow. When Caesar sees Brutus among them, he says, “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” and dies. Antony sends word that he will follow Brutus if Brutus can explain the murder. He shakes the conspirators’ bloody hands, and Brutus, against Cassius’s advice, allows him to speak at the funeral. Alone with the body, Antony swears revenge: “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
Brutus speaks first, in plain and reasoned prose: he killed Caesar “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” The crowd cheers him. Then Antony speaks: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” Repeating again and again that “Brutus is an honourable man,” he shows the crowd Caesar’s torn cloak and body until they riot. Rushing through the streets, the mob tears apart an innocent poet, Cinna, because he has the same name as one of the conspirators.
Act 4: The Quarrel
Antony, Octavius, and a third leader, Lepidus, now rule Rome together and draw up a list of their enemies to be put to death. Brutus and Cassius have fled and raised armies. In Brutus’s tent at Sardis, the two men quarrel bitterly. Brutus accuses Cassius of corruption and of taking bribes, and Cassius feels betrayed by his friend. They are reconciled only when Brutus reveals that Portia is dead: in despair, she “swallow’d fire.”
Against Cassius’s advice, Brutus decides to march to Philippi to meet the enemy. That night, alone in his tent, he sees the ghost of Caesar, which calls itself “Thy evil spirit, Brutus” and promises to meet him at Philippi.
Act 5: Philippi
The armies meet at Philippi. Cassius, believing wrongly that the battle is lost and that his friend Titinius has been captured, orders his servant Pindarus to kill him with the sword that stabbed Caesar: “Caesar, thou art revenged, / Even with the sword that kill’d thee.” He had misread everything. Standing over the bodies of Cassius and Titinius, Brutus cries, “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!”
When the second battle is lost, Brutus asks his friends to help him die. At last his servant Strato holds the sword, and Brutus runs on it: “Caesar, now be still: / I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.” Antony and Octavius find the body. Antony declares that Brutus alone of the conspirators acted for the common good, and calls him “the noblest Roman of them all.”
Characters
The main figures in the play, and what drives each of them.
Brutus
A Roman nobleman, Caesar’s friend, and a man admired by everyone for his honor. He joins the conspiracy not for personal gain but because he fears for the republic. His idealism makes him the conspiracy’s leader and also its weakness: he spares Antony, lets him speak, and trusts the people to understand reason. Many critics see him, not Caesar, as the play’s tragic hero.
Cassius
The conspiracy’s organizer, sharp, envious, and politically shrewd. He resents that Caesar, a man no better than himself, has become a god in Rome’s eyes. Caesar distrusts him on sight: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; / He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” Every piece of practical advice Cassius gives is overruled by Brutus, and he is right every time.
Julius Caesar
The great general and ruler of Rome, who appears in only a few scenes and dies at the midpoint of the play. He is shown as both mighty and human: proud, superstitious, deaf in one ear, and prone to fits, yet boasting that he is as constant as the northern star. After his death, his name and memory dominate the rest of the play.
Mark Antony
Caesar’s loyal friend, whom the conspirators dismiss as a pleasure-loving lightweight. He proves the most dangerous man in Rome. His funeral speech, full of praise for the “honourable” Brutus, turns the crowd into a mob and starts a civil war.
Casca
A blunt, sarcastic conspirator who describes Caesar’s refusal of the crown with contempt, and who strikes the first blow. He also gives the play one of its most borrowed phrases: of a speech in Greek, he says, “it was Greek to me.”
Portia and Calpurnia
The wives of Brutus and Caesar. Portia wounds herself to prove she can be trusted with her husband’s secret, and later dies in despair. Calpurnia’s dream of Caesar’s bleeding statue is a true warning that her husband ignores.
Octavius
Caesar’s young heir, who joins Antony to defeat the conspirators. He speaks little, but history would make him Rome’s first emperor.
Themes
The ideas that run through Julius Caesar and give it its lasting power.
Power and Ambition
Is Caesar a danger to Rome, or only a great man that others envy? The play never settles it. Caesar refuses the crown three times, and Antony uses those refusals as proof that he was not ambitious. Brutus kills him for what he might become, not for anything he has done.
Honor
Brutus cares about honor above everything: “I love / The name of honour more than I fear death.” The conspirators need his honorable reputation to make their murder look like justice. Antony then turns the word itself into a weapon, repeating that “Brutus is an honourable man” until the phrase sounds like an accusation.
Persuasion and Rhetoric
Almost every turn in the plot comes from a speech. Cassius persuades Brutus; forged letters persuade him further; Decius persuades Caesar to go to the Senate; Antony persuades the crowd. The play shows how easily words can move people, and how a crowd can change its mind within minutes.
Fate and Free Will
Rome is full of omens: the soothsayer, the storm, Calpurnia’s dream. Yet Cassius insists that people choose their own destinies: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The characters constantly misread the signs they are given, and the play leaves open how much was fated and how much was chosen.
Key Quotations
The most famous lines in Julius Caesar, who speaks them, and what they mean.
“Beware the Ides of March”
The soothsayer, Act 1, scene 2. The ides were the fifteenth of March, the day Caesar would be killed. He ignores the warning, and when the day comes, he tells the soothsayer, “The ides of March are come.” The reply: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”
“The Fault, Dear Brutus, Is Not in Our Stars”
Cassius, Act 1, scene 2: “Men at some time are masters of their fates: / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” If they are inferior to Caesar, it is their own fault, not destiny’s, and they can change it.
“Yond Cassius Has a Lean and Hungry Look”
Caesar, Act 1, scene 2, to Antony: “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; / He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” Caesar prefers well-fed, contented men around him. His instinct about Cassius is exactly right.
“Cowards Die Many Times Before Their Deaths”
Caesar, Act 2, scene 2, when Calpurnia begs him to stay home: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.” Fear is a kind of dying, and Caesar will not live in fear. Hours later he is dead.
“Et Tu, Brute?”
Caesar, Act 3, scene 1, seeing his friend among his murderers: “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” The Latin means “You too, Brutus?” It has become the phrase for betrayal by a friend. Contrary to popular belief, they are not quite his last words: “Then fall, Caesar!” comes after.
“Cry ‘Havoc,’ and Let Slip the Dogs of War”
Antony, Act 3, scene 1, alone with Caesar’s body. He prophesies that Caesar’s spirit, “ranging for revenge,” will bring civil war to Italy.
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears”
Antony, Act 3, scene 2, the opening of the funeral speech: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” He claims he will not praise Caesar, then does nothing else. Our guide to what “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” means reads the speech in full.
“This Was the Most Unkindest Cut of All”
Antony, Act 3, scene 2, pointing to the rent Brutus’s dagger made in Caesar’s cloak. The double superlative makes it worse than the worst: of all the wounds, the betrayal of a friend hurt most.
“There Is a Tide in the Affairs of Men”
Brutus, Act 4, scene 3: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Opportunity must be seized when it comes. He uses the idea to argue for marching to Philippi, and it leads to their defeat.
“This Was the Noblest Roman of Them All”
Antony, Act 5, scene 5, over Brutus’s body. All the other conspirators acted out of envy of Caesar; Brutus alone acted for the common good. “This was a man,” Antony concludes.
Language and Form
How Shakespeare builds the play, and the techniques that make it work.
Two Funeral Speeches
Brutus speaks to the crowd in balanced, logical prose, appealing to their reason. Antony answers in passionate blank verse, appealing to their feelings, with props: the cloak, the wounds, the body. Side by side, the two speeches are a lesson in how persuasion works, and why feeling wins.
Irony
Antony’s repeated “honourable” is the most famous example, a word that means the opposite of what it says by the tenth time. But the play is full of irony: Caesar boasting of his constancy seconds before his death, or Cassius dying on the same sword that killed Caesar.
A Play in Two Halves
The murder comes in the middle of the play, not at the end. The first half builds toward it; the second half shows its consequences, as the conspirators’ cause collapses and the men who killed Caesar die one by one.
Omens
The storm, the soothsayer, Calpurnia’s dream, and the ghost give the play a sense of forces larger than politics. Each character reads the signs to suit what he already wants to do.
A Closer Reading: Caesar’s Spirit
Brutus wanted to kill the idea of Caesar without killing the man. The play gives him exactly the opposite: he kills the man, and the idea lives on stronger than before.
The night before the murder, Brutus explains what he is really fighting: “We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar; / And in the spirit of men there is no blood: / O, that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit, / And not dismember Caesar!” It is Caesar’s spirit, his power and his hold on Rome, that Brutus wants to destroy. Killing the body is a regrettable necessity.
But the spirit is the one part of Caesar the daggers cannot reach. Minutes after Brutus explains himself to the people, the crowd shows it has not understood at all. “Let him be Caesar,” shouts one citizen of Brutus himself, and another: “Caesar’s better parts / Shall be crown’d in Brutus.” The people have not rejected Caesar; they want another one. Over the body, Antony prophesies that “Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,” will bring war. In Brutus’s tent, the spirit appears in person, calling itself “Thy evil spirit, Brutus.” And the man who inherits Rome, Octavius, carries Caesar’s name.
By the end, the conspirators themselves say it. Cassius dies on the sword that killed Caesar, with Caesar’s name on his lips: “Caesar, thou art revenged.” Brutus, finding him, admits the truth: “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! / Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords / In our own proper entrails.” His own last words are to Caesar too: “Caesar, now be still.” The play is named for a man who dies in the third act because he never really leaves it. The conspirators set out to kill Caesarism and killed only Caesar, and the name they tried to end became a title that rulers would carry for centuries.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Julius Caesar, answered briefly.
What Is Julius Caesar About?
The conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, led by Cassius and Brutus, and its consequences. After the murder, Mark Antony turns the people against the conspirators, and civil war follows, ending with the deaths of Cassius and Brutus at Philippi.
Who Is the Tragic Hero of Julius Caesar?
Many critics consider it to be Brutus rather than Caesar. Brutus has the most inner conflict, makes the fatal choices, and falls because of his own idealism, while Caesar dies halfway through the play.
When Does Caesar Die in the Play?
In Act 3, scene 1, at the Senate on the ides of March. He appears again afterward only as a ghost, in Act 4.
Why Does Brutus Kill Caesar?
He fears that Caesar, once crowned, will become a tyrant and destroy the Roman republic. As he tells the people, he acted “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”
When Was Julius Caesar Written?
In 1599. A Swiss traveler, Thomas Platter, recorded seeing a tragedy about Julius Caesar in London in September of that year, almost certainly Shakespeare’s, probably at the newly built Globe.
Related Reading
Three pages that take Julius Caesar further.