MODERN CAESAR

Why was Julius Caesar Read?

Now that we/I have read (and listened to, and watched etc.) "Julius Caesar" I can think of a few ways that the book relates to modern times, but after the combination of the play and the little quote things that we had to comment/write on, I can make far more similarities to the Rome that existed at the time of Caesar, to modern times and the United States. The more I think about it, the more the Romans of the late Republic seem like 2000 year old versions of us. But my explanation of that shall wait for later, as it is only one of several reasons that we possibly read Julius Caesar.

The first reason, is as always, that it is simply considered one of those "great literature" things, and that everyone else reads it also. It is almost a tradition type thing to read and analyze such plays. Shakespeare wrote it, so it is also a history lesson, especially when combined with the fact that the play is about Caesar and Ancient Rome and such.

However, that is obviously not a good reason. One thing that I see in Caesar which, to me at least, seems like a good reason to read it is that it shows allot of people, who appear to be one way, and are in actuality different. In one way the play is filled with stereotypes with "Honorable Brutus," and "Sneaky/Sly Cassius," the "Power Hungry Caesar," and "the follower Anthony." Yet, as the play comes about, all these stereotypes end up being at least partially untrue. Brutus is honorable, but he has more to him than that, and unlike a stereotypical honorable guy, he is weak, and easily manipulated. Caesar is possibly power hungry, we never find out definitively, but he is not a pure evil tyrant; and he is far from emotionless, as he is hurt most when he sees that Brutus is against him. In fact it seems he thought that since Brutus was against him, Rome was also, so he died for Rome, quite the opposite of what a power hungry tyrant would die from. And as we learn later in the story, Anthony is far from a mere follower. In short, Julius Caesar in a way seems like a people story, about people, who, even the good ones, make bad decisions and are not perfect. In fact, I cannot think of a single character in Julius Caesar who did not believe he or she was doing the right thing. Every single person thought that they were righteous in some way, even Cassius did not really consider himself to be doing something "bad." Yet, it seems that not a single character ended up actually doing the right things throughout the play, most of them never did anything right. Perhaps Caesar is in some way about decisions. As I mentioned, it is also a story of people being different than who they seem. Both these themes are somewhat Universal and can easily be related to modern times.

And then there was the idea, as I mentioned before, that the late Roman Republic in general was somewhat similar to the Modern United States. I probably never would have really thought this related to the actual play if I hadn’t read those little quotes, but nonetheless, some bits of it can be seen in the play. There are several ways I see them as similar. First, is the most obvious link to the story, which is government. People at that point in history in Rome were starting to have a "who cares" type of attitude towards government, as arguably, many Americans have today. The reasoning behind this lack of Interest was that all the politicians were corrupt, so no one could really influence government anymore, and that people in general were starting to get corrupt rich, greedy etc. It was "the good old days" against the new evil times, which not only relates to people’s views in the U.S. but also to that of people in general. It seems almost human nature to blame the present.

So there are many reasons why I think we may have read Caesar, hopefully at least one of them was correct. Or better, perhaps we read Caesar for all of these reasons. Whatever the case, it is clear that in many ways, "Julius Caesar" relates to our modern times.