Julius Caesar

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, dealing with the assassination of Julius Caesar and its aftermath. Some famous lines from the play are “Et tu, Brute?” “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” and “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

A Roman general and dictator in the first century b.c. In military campaigns to secure Roman rule over the province of Gaul, present-day France, he gained much prestige. The Roman senate, fearing his power, ordered him to disband his army, but Caesar refused, crossed the Rubicon River, returned to Rome with his army, and made himself dictator. On a subsequent campaign in Asia, he reported to the senate, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Caesar was assassinated by his friend Brutus (see also Brutus) and others on the ides of March in 44 b.c.