“Et tu, Brute?” –Then fall, Caesar (Act 3.1, Line 78).

I don’t know about you, but whenever I read that line, I get a shiver down my spine. “You too, Brutus?” Caesar trusted Brutus this entire time, and cast suspicion upon everyone else. He never could have imagined that his “best friend” would betray him. His mind, body, and spirit were shattered into a million pieces, and as a reader you can’t help but feel sympathetic for the man that lost everything.
It was fitting, and extremely heartbreaking, that Brutus was the one that dealt the killing blow. In fact, a footnote for the play stated that Caesar stopped trying to defend himself from the attack when he saw that Brutus was a part of it. This not only shows how highly he regarded Brutus as a friend, but also how defeated it made him feel when he saw that he had been abandoned.
It’s interesting to note the first lines Brutus spoke the moment after Caesar is assassinated. “People and senators, be not affrighted. / Fly not, stand still. Ambition’s debt is paid.” This line is both horribly sad, and extremely revealing about Brutus as a character. One would think that after killing your best friend, you would say something that mourned their death. Instead, Brutus showed that he truly did care for the well being of his fellow Romans by telling them not to be afraid. His confidence in the “good deed” he just committed, makes him even more of a tragic character. He believed that Caesar had to die for his ambition, but in reality that “ambition” was a product of false rumors.

A quick Google search of the name Brutus, and you’ll find that it comes from the word meaning heavy in Latin. Brutus’s blade certainly did carry a heavy burden on Caesar, and on himself (Both physically and mentally). By the end of the play, this burden reached its climax when Brutus ran himself on Strato’s sword. “Caesar, now be still. / I killed not thee with half so good a will.” Brutus wished death upon himself more than he had wanted Caesar dead in the beginning of the play. After Brutus learned he had killed his best friend based on lies, the only way he could find any kind of peace was through his own demise.

‘This was the noblest Roman of them all. / All the conspirators save only he / Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only in a general honest thought / And common good to all made one of them. / His life was gentle, and the elements / So mixed in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world. “This was a man”’(Act 5.5, Line 68).

While all conspirators were against Caesar for selfish reasons, it was Brutus that truly cared about the well being of the Roman Empire. His selflessness, and overall virtuous character, made him a well respected individual, even to the people that were once considered his adversaries. In the eyes of Antony, Brutus exemplified what it truly meant to be a man.