Brutus

Likewise the Xanthians, whose town Brutus besieged, all rushed to their death — men, women, and children — with such an intense desire to die that there is nothing we do to avoid death that they did not do to leave life.

So much so that Brutus could barely save a few.

In like manner, if a man were to choose whether he would have his soldiers richly and sumptuously accoutred or armed only for the necessity of the matter in hand, this argument would step in to favor the first, of which opinion was Sertorius, Philopoemen, Brutus, Caesar, and others, that it is to a soldier an enflaming of courage and a spur himself in brave attire;

Of the same strain was Statilius’ answer, when Brutus courted him into the conspiracy against Caesar;

Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other passion.

Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the contrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were the sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they killed themselves before the due time and a just occasion.

The like accident befell Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of having in his books commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and corrupt Senate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his writings to the flame.

I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wrote upon Virtue, for it is well to learn the theory from those who best know the practice.

But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things, I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own.

as that great Brutus his friend, for example, who said ’twas a broken and feeble eloquence, fractam et elumbem.

and were to be wished that we had the journals of Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus, Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions;

He had a vision like that of Marcus Brutus, that first threatened him in Gaul, and afterward appeared to him in Persia just before his death.

Brutus made use of the same device when besieged in Modena, and others elsewhere have done the same.

hear Brutus speak of it, the mere written words of this man sound as if he would purchase it at the price of his life.

Besides all these, he entertained Servilia, Cato’s sister and mother to Marcus Brutus, whence, every one believes, proceeded the great affection he had to Brutus, by reason that he was born at a time when it was likely he might be his son.

Besides all these, he entertained Servilia, Cato’s sister and mother to Marcus Brutus, whence, every one believes, proceeded the great affection he had to Brutus, by reason that he was born at a time when it was likely he might be his son.

Marcus Brutus, Polybius;

I have had a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of Brutus;

to see Brutus, when heaven and earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing some hours of the night from his rounds to read and abridge Polybius, in all security.