Yes today is March 15th, the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar lost the Roman Primary partly because his close friend Marcus Brutus stabbed him in the back.  And just before Brutus was about to take over, Marc Antony, the great communicator made a passive-aggressive speech that turned things around. But remember Antony was secretly good friends with Willie Shakespeare, it was he who wrote the speech for Marc. And by the way Caesar’s first name wasn’t really Julius, Shakespeare changed that also, his real first name was Groucho and he had two brothers Chicus and Harpus. Willie didn’t mention them because Harpus was mute, and Chicus had a very strong Roman accent.

Personally I don’t even believe it was Antony’s speech alone that sealed Brutus’ fate, the fact that Antony was a dead ringer for Marlon Brando had to help. And as you can see in this picture, Antony wasn’t really believing what he was saying during the speech.  See the smirk on his face? It was all an act.

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You may remember Antony’s big speech from the Shakespeare version below is just a bit of it:

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it …
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man…

Marc Antony was faking it, but it doesn’t matter. After his speech it was “Antony this, Antony that” everyone adored that loser!

Who cares! It was that same fake charm that helped him seduce Cleopatra, the woman who gave birth to Caesar’s son. Yeah I know Shakespeare said she seduced him– but come on, do you believe everything you read in the liberal media?

Willie even cleaned up the guy’s nickname.  They never called him the Bard of Avon. They said he was a bird brain, they called him the Boid (Brooklyn for Bird). Shakespeare was in the tank for Antony so he cleaned it up a bit.

But Antony is not my focus today, because in my acting days I played the role of Marcus Brutus. He was a man of great honor and a conservative.  He killed Caesar because big Julie was going to take over the democratic process, rule as a despot and destroy people’s freedoms. By the way they used knives because there was no Second Amendment in Rome ( or guns). But nothing angered Marcus more than when politicians were on the take, you know like the kind of things Peter Schweizer wrote about in Clinton Cash.

Brutus’ had two big political problems, he expected everyone to be as honorable as he was and would never verbally attack another candidate for emperor (kind of like Romney). His other problem was , wasn’t as good looking as the competition, Mr. Marlon Brando look-alike. In the picture below we see Marcus with his taller friend Caius Cassius. He’s not bad looking, just not as good looking as Antony. And because he was so honorable, he didn’t go to Marc Antony before Caesar’s funeral to cut a deal, you know, make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Brutus wanted to serve but for Antony it was all about the power. For Marc Antony ruling Rome was like a chariot named desire.

 

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Marcus Brutus was a man of real honor and a great leader but Shakespeare felt he could only have one hero so Marcus was the odd man out, so Willie S. took a tale that should have been a story of a  Roman star being born, turned out for Brutus to be a deadly affair.

Even though he wasn’t given the all the credit he deserved by the Boid, Willie Shakespeare at least gave him one scene where it displayed his great sense of honor.  The scene where Brutus and fellow conspirator Caius Cassius had a fight because Cassius had an issue with “sticky fingers.” Kind of like a NYC buildings’ inspector. Below are two segments of Brutus’ rebuke of Cassius, they just so happen to be the speeches I torture my family every time they even mention, the Ides of March:

 Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemn’d to have an itching palm;
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers.
The name of Cassius honours this corruption,
And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.
Remember March, the ides of March remember:
Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?
What villain touch’d his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What, shall one of us
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honours
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.

 

(…)You have done that you should be sorry for.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,
For I am arm’d so strong in honesty
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me:
For I can raise no money by vile means:
By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection: I did send
To you for gold to pay my legions,
Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous,
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
Dash him to pieces!

That’s it for the Ides Of March, next time we will cover King Richard II and the real reason he didn’t get along with his cousin Hank.