Read the extract from 'Julius Caesar' Act 5, Scene 1, given below and answer the questions that follow: Cassius: Then, if we lose this battle, You are contented to be led in triumph Through the streets of Rome? Brutus: No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman, That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome; He bears too great a mind. But this same day Must end that work the ides of March begun; And whether we shall meet again I know not. Therefore our everlasting farewell take: Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this parting was well made.
At the end of the play, Antony calls Brutus, 'the noblest Roman of them all'. Why does he say this? What does this reveal of Antony's character?
Topic: Act 5 Scene 5 — Antony's tribute
Answer
Antony says it because Brutus alone among the conspirators acted from an honest public motive. All the others struck at Caesar out of envy of his greatness; only Brutus joined them in a general honest thought and for the common good of Rome. Antony adds that his life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and declare to all the world, "This was a man!"
It reveals a generous and fair-minded side of Antony. He is speaking of a defeated enemy who helped murder the man he loved, yet he judges him justly and orders him buried with full honours in his own tent — showing magnanimity and a soldier’s respect for integrity.
Split the marks: the reason (Brutus’s motive, contrasted with the other conspirators’ envy) and the character point (Antony’s magnanimity). For a fuller answer you may add the balancing view — that Antony has also proved cold and calculating with Lepidus and in the proscriptions — so the tribute shows a complex man, not a simply noble one.