Julius+Caesar

=**//The Tragedy of Julius Caesar//**= = =

**by William Shakespeare**
=== Shakespeare loved a great story. What could be more intriguing than the famous story of Julius Caesar, the brilliant war general whose expansion of the Roman Empire won him the adoration of the people -- but the ill will of a group of senators who resented his power? ===

=== History has been ambivalent about Caesar. Was he a good Roman, concerned only with the good of the people and unjustly killed by jealous colleagues? Or was he a power-hungry tyrant on the path toward dictatorship when he was cut down by a group of conspirators? Did the conspirators act out of a fear that a dictatorship would destroy the Republic? If so, does that make them evil assassins or heroes? ===

=== In the Middle Ages (12th-14th centuries), a poet named Dante Alleghieri, author of "The Inferno," placed the 2 lead conspirators, Cassius and Brutus, in the lowest rings of his imagined hell for the treason they committed. To him, this was a crime surpassed only by Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus.... and Satan himself. ===

=== Shakespeare, a Renaissance man, sees things very differently. To him, Cassius and Brutus are tragic figures, flawed men who try to keep a potential tyrant from crushing their beloved Rome. In just a few decades, revolutions would begin as people began to demand freedom from political and religious tyrants. Quests would begin from Europe into new worlds, where adventurous and ostracized people could begin new lives. For the modern human, Brutus represents a torch-bearer for democracy. ===

**NO FEAR SHAKESPEARE LINK:**
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Tragic Hero Overview (slideshow)

 * [|https://docs.google.com/a/d214.org/presentation]**



- details of Caesar's assassination (who, when, how, why)