Ides of March: The Mob

ANTONY 
For Brutus’ sake, I am beholding to you.
He goes into the pulpit.
FOURTH PLEBEIAN  What does he say of Brutus?
THIRD PLEBEIAN  He says for Brutus’ sake
He finds himself beholding to us all.
FOURTH PLEBEIAN 
’Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.
FIRST PLEBEIAN 
This Caesar was a tyrant.
THIRD PLEBEIAN  Nay, that’s certain.
We are blest that Rome is rid of him.

ANTONY 
Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.
Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves?
Alas, you know not. I must tell you then.
You have forgot the will I told you of.
PLEBEIANS 
Most true. The will! Let’s stay and hear the will.
ANTONY 
Here is the will, and under Caesar’s seal:
To every Roman citizen he gives,
To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.
SECOND PLEBEIAN 
Most noble Caesar! We’ll revenge his death.
THIRD PLEBEIAN  O royal Caesar!
ANTONY  Hear me with patience.
PLEBEIANS  Peace, ho!
ANTONY 
Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbors, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber. He hath left them you,
And to your heirs forever—common pleasures
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?
FIRST PLEBEIAN 
Never, never!—Come, away, away!
We’ll burn his body in the holy place
And with the brands fire the traitors’ houses.
Take up the body.

I think it would have amused the Romans of Caesar’s generation if they could have learned that the assassination of Julius Caesar would eventually receive immortality through a play written more than 16 centuries after the event by a barbarian playwright in the Tin Islands that Caesar had briefly invaded. It would have tickled their well developed concept of the ludicrous, judging from Roman comedy.

This Ides of March we focus on that powerful, and turbulent character:  the Roman mob, or people if you prefer.  Shakespeare had the usual Tudor disdain for the people.  Our democratic notions he would have regarded as mere excuses for anarchy.  The mob he was familiar with was the London mob, quick to rise up under any pretext, destructive, murderous and ultimately self defeating.  The role of the people had been center stage in the Roman Republic for centuries prior to the birth of Caesar.  Roman politics eventually settled between two rough factions, the Optimates and the Populares.  The Optimates pretended to be for government by the boni, the best in Rome, meaning usually the richest and the most aristocratic.  The Populares pretended to be for, and speak for, the Roman people.  Much of this was fairly transparent nonsense and window dressing for wills to power.  Both factions consisted almost entirely of wealthy aristocrats of both plebeian and patrician origin, and both sides lacked any understanding of the economic changes brought about by the creation of an empire that rendered Italian agriculture less and less profitable, and swelled the ranks of the urban poor, who had only their votes and their violence to sell.

Roman politics became endless urban conflict, with masters of the mob looming large.  The most far sighted of the Roman statesmen saw that the violent mob had to be taken out of politics, and that  politics had to cease to be an endless cold civil war.  That aspect of the dilemma confronting Roman politicians at the end of the Republic is too close to our own increasingly ferocious politics for comfort.

In Julius Caesar the mob is a weather vane, swung in favor of the assassination by the words of Brutus, only to take the opposite position by the speech of Antony.  The mob is only destructive as Shakespeare shows, its violence ultimately serving Antony’s purpose in frightening the conspirators from Rome, leaving that formidable power source in the hands of Antony, and his two eventual allies Octavian and Lepidus.  Shakespeare and the Roman aristocrats he wrote about shared a disdain and fear of the mob.  In this, and in little else, the Romans who are the subject of his play would have agreed with Shakespeare.

On this day in 44 BC. #IdesOfMarch pic.twitter.com/iU5JCKhFAl

— Chief (@BarstoolChief) March 15, 2023