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Rhetoric and the Masses in “Julius Caesar”
Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar commemorates one of the great turning points in the history of Western Civilization: the transition of Rome from a republic to an empire. Before the time of Caesar, Roman sovereignty had resided with the people and the Senate. After Caesar, power fell into the hands of a hereditary emperor. Shakespeare's play only presents a snapshot of one moment in this long period of transition. It is more poetry than history — but this is its virtue. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare asserts the power of words to mold minds and shape events. He makes language the real force behind history, casts oratory as its general, and crowns clever beguiling rhetoric as the true master of mankind.
Rome's true history is at times indistinguishable from its legends. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Roman Republic began in 509 BCE when the people of Rome revolted against King Tarquin the Proud and conferred authority upon an elected senate. Livy's stories and dates may only be myth, but it is clear that the SPQR — Senatus Populusque Romanus, or the Senate and the People of Rome — governed Rome for several centuries with no king. Then, in 49 BCE, the Roman general Julius Caesar led his troops into civil war against the Senate. As Caesar gained power, he prevailed upon the Senate to declare him dictator in perpetuity in 45 BCE. Very quickly, however, a band of senators began to plot Caesar's assassination, fearful that he might otherwise establish a new monarchy and dissolve their republic. On March 15, 44 BCE, as many as sixty conspirators led by Senators Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus attacked Caesar in the Theatre of Pompey, stabbing him 23 times. Although Caesar's dictatorship had ended, his murder provoked a new civil war that ultimately led to the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of a new imperial monarchy under Octavius, who became Emperor Caesar Augustus in 27 BCE. Monarchy remained the dominant form of government in Europe until the twentieth century.
The play Julius Caesar, written around 1599 CE, is a dramatization of the Roman Senate's conspiracy against Julius Caesar and the beginnings of the civil war unleashed by his death, culminating in the defeat of the assassins Cassius and Brutus.1 Shakespeare based his play closely on the work of the Roman historian Plutarch, but he mixed tradition with poetic invention and contemporary English concerns. For Shakespeare, living in Elizabethan England, there was no such thing as a government without kings or queens. This certainly shaped the way Shakespeare viewed Rome's historic struggle between monarchy and republicanism. Julius Caesar was structured as a tragedy — the conspirators who hoped to maintain popular sovereignty by killing Caesar ultimately lost everything by their deed. The play was in part a warning of the chaos and conflict that could arise from the absence of strong leadership.
The most critical moments of Shakespeare's play take place in Act III, Scene 2 (read the text), shortly after Caesar's death. Rumors of the assassination had spread through Rome, and the scene opened upon a mass of citizens who had gathered in the forum awaiting more news. This crowd was addressed in turn by Marcus Brutus, one of the leading senators involved in the assassination, and Mark Antony, a fellow general and supporter of Caesar. As these men delivered their oratory, the people of Rome would decide on their reaction to Caesar's death and choose whether to support Brutus, the Senate and the Republic, or Antony, Caesar and tyranny.
Shakespeare depicted the "throng of citizens" in Julius Caesar as helpless to think for themselves in the face of the powerful language wielded by Brutus and Antony. The masses were convinced first by one speaker and then the other. In the end, the people made Antony and Caesar their heroes and Brutus their villain. Tyranny prevailed, and the scene appropriately closed with news of the arrival of Octavius ― the man who would become Emperor. In order to see why the citizens in Shakespeare's play ultimately chose to revolt against their own sovereignty, it is essential to examine the speeches of this scene and uncover the inner workings of their rhetorical magic.
Explosive Nonviolence: Two Bombings in 1970
In August, 1970, two explosions tore through quiet nights on different sides of the globe. Neither took place in a war zone. Each was carried out by people supposedly dedicated to non-violence, but each group felt that nothing less than an explosion could achieve its goals. One explosion did what its detonators hoped. One did not. Both are largely forgotten.
The first explosion took place in Iceland. Government officials had embarked on a development project for the northern Þingeyjarsýsla region that involved building a dam across the Laxá River. Local residents were dismayed. They stood to lose their land, livelihood, and countryside beneath the dam's reservoir. The environment was also at stake. The Laxá was one of Iceland's best fishing streams, and its name literally means "Salmon River." A dam would have blocked the salmon migration and irrevocably changed the river's ecology. Quickly, farmers and fishermen united in a legal battle to block the dam. Their efforts were fruitless. Construction continued, and it seemed that only one option remained.
Late on the night of August 7, 1970, over two-hundred local residents gathered at the river. They dug holes in the dam's foundations, filled them with dynamite, and, ensuring that no people or animals were in sight, blew the dam to pieces. The following day, everyone in the community called the police to claim responsibility for the incident. Hearings were held, sixty-five people were convicted, but their fines were overturned by Iceland's Supreme Court. One conspirator was ultimately elected to parliament. The dam was never rebuilt.
The second explosion occurred in the United States. Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had been protesting the United States' war in Vietnam for several years. Protests had started nonviolently, but police had responded brutally at some demonstrations, beating students. By the end of the decade, the FBI had even infiltrated student organizations. Many protests centered on the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC), which occupied three floors of Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus. Students suspected AMRC of conducting research to further the Vietnam War, and many wanted it closed. The University of Wisconsin, however, had no intention of banishing the federally funded research and the respected mathematicians it brought to Madison. To a few war protesters, it seemed that only one option remained.
Before dawn on August 24, 1970, four anti-war activists detonated a homemade one ton bomb in a van parked outside Sterling Hall. They set off the explosion at 3:42 AM, hoping that the building would be empty, but it was not. A post-doctorate physics researcher with no connection to AMRC was killed, four others were injured, and over $2.1 million worth of property damage was done, mostly to the UW physics department on Sterling Hall's lower floors. Upstairs, the Army Mathematics Research Center escaped with little damage. The four perpetrators fled, three were eventually caught and sentenced to short prison terms, the fourth was never apprehended. The Vietnam War continued for five more years.
So it happened that two nonviolent activist groups turned to explosive tactics in August 1970. The Laxá River campaign succeeded in its agenda. The Sterling Hall bombing did not. It is tragic that even in two established democracies like Iceland and the United States, underprivileged groups sometimes see no means but violence to make themselves heard. It is even worse in recent democracies—just look at this month's headlines about explosions in Baghdad. Spreading democracy to Iraq at the point of a gun is no way to get people in there to settle their differences peacefully. Indeed, using violence to advance any nonviolent agenda is always playing with fire. As the Sterling Hall bombing made clear, even well-intended violence is prone to unintended consequences. Moreover, violence is often useless at achieving intended results anyway. The Sterling Hall bombers should have known they couldn't end a war by blowing something up. Wars end with treaties, not explosions.
A Ban on Banks: Wisconsin’s Radical 1846 Constitution
Political leaders have been debating for months over how to deal with the banking-induced financial crisis currently seizing the world, but controversy over banking is nothing new. Wisconsin's history demonstrates this vividly. In 1846, as Wisconsin was preparing for statehood, a political convention met in Madison to author the state constitution. The draft this convention created never took effect—citizens overwhelmingly rejected it in an 1847 referendum, and statehood was delayed until a second constitution was approved the next year. The first proposal, voters thought, was simply too radical. Two of its radical provisions dealt with debt and banking.
One section of the rejected constitution, the Homestead Provision, was designed to protect family homes from being seized to cover debt. An even more radical proposal, Article 10, actually banned any bank from doing business within Wisconsin's borders.
The Homestead Provision, actually based on provisions in the earlier Texas Constitution, would have exempted the family home and forty acres, to a maximum value of one thousand dollars (then a substantial sum), from being seized to repay contractual debts. The second constitution replaced this with a more vague statement exempting only "a reasonable amount of property" from seizure. Currently, Wisconsin law provides an exemption for property worth up to $40,000, but it does not apply to mortgages or debts incurred to purchase or improve the home.
The idea to forbid banking in Wisconsin was proposed by Edward G. Ryan, a Democrat elected to the constitutional convention from Racine. The convention approved his proposal by a 79-27 vote, and the article they passed read like this:
Article X: On Banks and Banking
Section I: There shall be no bank of issue within this state.
Section II: The legislature shall not have power to authorize or incorporate, by any general or special law, any bank or other institution having any banking power or privilege, or to confer upon any corporation, institution, person or persons any banking power or privilege.
Section III: It shall not be lawful for any corporation, institution, person or persons within this state, under any pretense or authority, to make or issue any paper money, note, bill, certificate, or other evidence of debt whatever intended to circulate as money.
Section IV: It shall not be lawful for any corporation within this state under any pretense or authority, to exercise the business of receiving deposits of money, making discounts, or buying or selling bills of exchange, or to do any other banking business whatever.
Section V: No branch or agency of any bank or banking institution of the United States, or of any State or Territory within or without the United States shall be established or maintained within this state.
Section VI: It shall not be lawful to circulate within this state, after the year one thousand eight hundred and forty seven, any paper money, note, bill, certificate or other evidence of debt whatever intended to circulate as money, issued without this state, of any denomination less than ten dollars, or after the year one thousand eight hundred and forty nine, of any denomination less than twenty dollars.
Section VII: The legislature shall, at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, and from time to time thereafter as may be necessary, enact adequate penalties for the punishment of all violations and evasions of the provisions of this article.1
Wisconsin's politicians were willing to ban banking because they had lived through decades of bank-related economic turmoil. In 1816, the U.S. Congress had delegated management of federal finance to a private corporation, the Second Bank of the United States, but in 1819 and 1834, the bank's policies were blamed for causing recessions. The congressional charter for the bank expired in 1836, but in its stead, unregulated "wildcat banks" began offering easy loans and printing money, as was legal at the time. Eager for profit, the banks expanded rapidly, making too much money available far too quickly. The resulting inflation triggered a depression that lasted from 1837 to 1843, unparalleled in severity until the Great Depression. When Wisconsin's founding politicians met to write the constitution in 1846, these events were still fresh in mind.
Standing in Place, Moving in Time
I stand at a quiet intersection on a cold winter morning. This is the corner of Rolette & Water Streets on St. Feriole Island in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. In front of me lie the half-abandoned tracks of the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad. Behind me sits the frozen Mississippi River. Around me are snow-filled parks and a few isolated buildings. I am the only person in sight.
There are more people here in summer. Tourists come to the riverside then, and so do the locals. They come to boat or to fish, to picnic or to stroll, to see the sights or to escape the city. They aren't here now. It's too cold, too early, too distant, too quiet. What would one do, except shiver? The tavern on the opposite corner opens in the afternoon, a few might come then. Mostly, though, this is a place of icy silence.
A hundred or more years ago, it would have bustled with commotion.
The street where I stand now was then a railyard, the scene before me would have held homes and businesses, the river behind me would have been obscured from sight by docks and warehouses. This place was then a hub of motion, especially in the summer, when it saw not just trains and carriages, but ferries and barges, and eventually even the town's first airplane landing.
The railroad was first completed to Prairie du Chien in 1857, connecting the Mississippi River here to Lake Michigan in Milwaukee. Fittingly, the rail company was called the Milwaukee & Mississippi. It's tracks originally ended at Lowertown—roughly that section of Prairie du Chien south of Wells Street—but in the early 1860s, the railroad moved its facilities north to this site, where the river was deeper and shipping easier. So began a rush of construction as the railroad company built a rail-yard, a depot, a large grain elevator, and a crowning luxury hotel called the Railroad House—renamed the Dousman House Hotel after 1868.
The Diamond Jo steamboat line also built here in the 1860s. It's new facility, a riverfront warehouse, permitted boats to load and unload cargo directly between the river and the rails.
With the onset of such commerce, the quiet village that had existed at Prairie du Chien since the 1780s also burst into a rapid expansion. New homes and businesses sprung up around the depot, and the neighborhood thrived. For decades this would be a hub of transportation. Goods and livestock were sent up and down the river. Grain poured in from the plains of Iowa and Minnesota on its way to feed eastern cities. Settlers came in the other direction, rushing towards new homes in the west. Everything here was about moving, about going places, about technology and speed. The sound was of steam engines and jostling crowds, the smell was of burning coal.
Today, the only sound is the wind, and the only smell is the snow.
Wisconsin’s Christmas Past
A century ago, the city of Appleton, Wisconsin, celebrated Christmas on a grand scale. It was 1908, and for the first time, the city had decorated its streets with electric lights for the holiday. The occasion was not unlike our observance of Christmas today: bright, extravagant, and unrelentingly commercial. Summing up the event on December 31, the Appleton Post boasted that "The illumination of College Avenue by the Appleton merchants, together with the notoriety given to the town by the possession of the biggest Christmas tree in the world, and not only the biggest, but the prettiest, put the merchants of nearby towns to their wits' end to keep their trade from drifting over to Appleton."1
Christmas in Wisconsin wasn't always such a colossal affair. Indeed, the holiday hasn't always been celebrated here. The American Indians who first occupied the land had their own traditions, beliefs, and ceremonies. The first people who celebrated Christmas in what became Wisconsin were French and British traders who arrived after the seventeenth century. Few of these first Christian arrivals were especially devout. "We sometimes kept Sundays; but whether on the right day was doubtful," recalled Thomas Gummersall Anderson, a British trader who traveled Wisconsin widely in the early 1800s.2 Despite their relaxed attitude towards religion, Anderson and others like him tried to retain their Christmas traditions as best as they could in an unfamiliar land. Anderson's memoir, written just a few years before his death in 1875, records two Christmas feasts gone terribly awry on the Wisconsin frontier.