Julius Caesar is a play about the failure to recognize each other, and ourselves, for who and what we are. Caesar
sees himself as mighty and invincible, even divine, and fails to recognize his own desire to be loved. Brutus imagiens
himself a stoic, but cannot govern his passions. Antony imagines himself to be the savior of Rome in the wake of his mentor's
assassination, but he fails to see the threat that young Octavius represents.
Like a lot of people, I first encountered Julius Caesar in high school, and my teachers liked to fixate on who the
tragedy Julius Caesar really belongs to, but I have come to know it as Rome's tragedy. Rome itself is unable to see
what it has become: her Senators, soldiers, citizens, and plebians alike cannot look past their mythic past.
In a play probably written shortly after this one, Shakespeare wrote "This above all: to thine own self be true, // And it
must follow, as the night the day, // Thou canst not then be false to any man." The consequences of failing to obey that
(perhaps more eloquent) Platonic injunction to know thyself are on display in Julius Caesar, and this animation of
the failure of a society to see itself for what it really is continues to both haunt and inspire me. As, I hope, it will
inspire you.
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