be grateful and reward them. If it failed, they could throw themselves on the mercy of their powerful father, who would be in a position to protect them.
The conspirators made the mistake of discussing their plans in front of a slave, including the fact that they had recorded the details of the plot in a contract that was going to be delivered to the Tarquins at an appointed time and place. The slave reported them to the authorities, the guilty parties were arrested at the rendezvous, and the written evidence of the conspiracy was seized. When confronted, Titus and Tiberius admitted what they had done, assuming that Brutus would put his fidelity as a father over his duty as consul. They anticipated a token period of exile in one of the nearby Etruscan cities, which might actually be enjoyable, after which they would return to their rightful places. They turned out to be poor judges of their father’s character.
Brutus looked sternly at his sons. Their crime, he declared, was treason against the Roman state. He reminded them of the oath they had sworn before him to defend the new liberty of the Roman people from the bribes and promises of kings. Citizenship in the republic was not just a privilege, it was also a weighty responsibility, and true citizens would always put Rome before their personal interests. The consul’s sons had betrayed that trust. The law was unequivocal, and the penalty was death. The traitors were thrown into prison with no further discussion.
On the appointed day of execution, a large crowd gathered on land freshly drained by the Cloaca Maxima, a place that would one day become the Roman Forum. While there were a number of conspirators meeting their fate, everyone was looking at Brutus and his sons, wondering how the consul would handle the event. Many heroes had given their lives in battle for Rome as their patriotic duty; it was quite another thing to deliberately sacrifice two sons in their prime. Titus and Tiberius were stripped and brutally flogged. Some observers reported that Brutus winced and even wept as the boys cried out for him to save them. But he regained his composure, his face settling into an impassive mask. He gave the order for his sons to be decapitated. The slave who had exposed their plot was given citizenship and a rich reward.1111
Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.4.
The assembled Romans were aghast, but also impressed by Brutus’s self-control and willingness to sacrifice his personal happiness for the state. They started to cheer. The consul stood up and raised his hand for silence. “Do not praise me,” he said, “for I am nothing now but a grieving father. Let me go and prepare my house to receive the bodies of my sons.” The crowd quietly parted to let him through.
The Roman Senate confiscated the Tarquins’ property in Rome, which infuriated the family, and they made an attempt to retake the city by force. They marshaled a large Etruscan army that should have outmatched any force the Romans could field.
At first, the battle appeared to be going to the Tarquins. Arruns was in charge of the cavalry, and he confidently observed the smaller force of Roman horsemen. His eye was caught by a group of lictors carrying the ceremonial fasces, the bundle of rods surrounding an axe that symbolized the authority of Roman magistrates. That could mean only one thing: a consul was present. Scanning the lines, Arruns recognized Brutus’s distinctive face. He spurred his mount forward, unable to believe his luck. If he could get rid of his stupid cousin once and for all, the road to Rome would be open. Brutus recognized Arruns as well and rode out to confront him. No words were exchanged as the two cousins speared each other through the chest.1212
Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.5.
Brutus’s death galvanized the Romans, while the Etruscans were demoralized by the loss of Arruns. The battle ended in confusion, but the Romans quickly declared victory and returned to their city to bury their hero. The Tarquinian forces scattered. Tarquin the Proud and his sons were finished for good this time.
Brutus received a magnificent funeral and the entire city mourned him for a year, led by the women of Rome. A large bronze statue was commissioned depicting him brandishing the dagger he had pulled out of Lucretia’s chest as he swore to free Rome of tyrants. It was placed in front of a grand temple to Jupiter, which had just been completed on the sacred Capitoline Hill.
The bronze Brutus drew upon Greek precedents for commemorative monuments and may have been executed by Greek craftsmen who were well versed in casting metal. Still, the generations of Romans who viewed this image of Brutus would have had a very different experience from that of the Athenians who marveled at the beauty of statues such as those adorning the Parthenon. The Greeks specialized in sculpting perfect faces that showed no trace of age or strain, conveying a spiritual superiority unaffected by the outside world. Judging from its art, classical Athens was exclusively populated by young and beautiful people who did not break a sweat, even if they were holding up buildings with their heads or battling monsters. The heroes of the Roman Republic, by contrast, were not transformed into the superhuman counterparts of the classical Greek heroes. Artists began showing them as they were, accentuating rather than airbrushing their individual, imperfect features.
Marble bust of a man, mid 1st century AD, Roman. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The result was the first realistic portraits as we understand them – images that record the unique appearance and individual character of their sitters. In Roman culture, their weathered, lined faces had something higher than mere beauty; they reflected the toil and sacrifice that produced the republic. The greatest ornaments of those portrayed were their heroic deeds, such as Cincinnatus leaving his plow in the field when suddenly appointed dictator to counter an Etruscan invasion and then returning to it immediately after the threat had been repulsed, or Fabius Maximus waging a long campaign to defeat Hannibal and all his elephants in the Second Punic War. The portrait busts of early Romans were treasured by their descendants, who displayed them in their homes as reverence for the forefathers developed into a sort of patriotic religion.
The harsh features of Lucius Junius Brutus had earned him a nickname that was intended to be mocking but wound up as a badge of honor. Indeed, Romans of later generations who wanted to connect themselves to the founder of the republic would claim to resemble his portrait on the Capitoline.1313
Plutarch, Brutus 1.
Rome: March 15, 44 BC
Some 450 years after the statue honoring Brutus was erected on the Capitoline Hill, one of his descendants, Marcus Junius Brutus, picked up a dagger and plunged it into the chest of the most powerful man in Rome. Julius Cæsar was the scion of the noble Julian clan claiming descent from Aeneas, who according to legend had fled Troy as the Greeks annihilated it and then made his way to the Italian peninsula. Cæsar was a brilliant politician and statesman but above all a warrior, campaigning as far afield as Britain and Egypt. The territories under the control of Rome were expanding dramatically, and this growth put a strain on the republican government while a series of civil wars was crippling it from within. When the Senate voted to make Cæsar “dictator in perpetuity” in an effort to restore order, it was a radical transformation of the office that had been devised in the early republic as a temporary expedient for crisis situations.
Most Romans believed that Cæsar was preparing to dissolve the republic once and for all. In desperation, his rivals banded together with the few stalwarts who thought the republic could be preserved, and they plotted his assassination. A key to the conspiracy was the participation of a new Brutus, who would bring the legitimacy of his ancestor’s heroic tyrannicide to this rather underhanded bit of political violence.
Instead of confronting Cæsar in a fair fight, the assassins planned to kill him when he was unarmed at a regular meeting of the Senate on March 15, known as the Ides of March. The defenseless Cæsar
