Cassius

Roman military leader

• Born: Unknown
• Birthplace: Probably Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: 42 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Philippi, Macedonia (now in Greece)

As a diehard republican, Cassius distrusted Julius Caesar’s ambition to control the Roman government. With his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus and others, Cassius organized Caesar’s assassination on the ides of March in 44 b.c.e.

Early Life

Little is known about the early life of Cassius (KA-see-uhs). Because he was born into a family long prominent in Roman history, Cassius almost certainly received the traditional education of a late Roman republican aristocrat and slave owner. Plutarch credited Cassius with a fluent command of the Greek language, which was employed by most Roman aristocrats during the Hellenistic Age for all important cultural and scholarly activities. Cassius would later correspond with the gifted lawyer and rhetorician Marcus Tullius Cicero, as both men wished to preserve the republican form of government in Rome and prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a dictator or oligarchical group.

Before he became an assassin, Cassius held several important positions in the Roman government and significant military commands fighting against the Parthians. In 49 b.c.e., Cassius was tribune when civil war broke out between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and he supported Pompey. Cassius surrendered to Caesar after Pompey lost the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 b.c.e. Given Caesar’s strong position, his pardon of Cassius was generous. Cassius, however, still harbored a smoldering resentment against Caesar as a would-be king of Rome.

Life’s Work

Cassius was a respected military leader. He first achieved public recognition in 53 b.c.e. while serving under Marcus Crassus in his campaign against the Parthians. After surviving the Roman defeat at Carrhae, he was able to secure Syria against the Parthians by 51 b.c.e. After receiving the pardon from Caesar, Cassius enjoyed a respected public position despite the fact that Caesar and others continued to question his motives.

Despite the generosity of Caesar, Cassius became alarmed as Caesar acquired more and more governmental power. In addition, Caesar appropriated some lions that Cassius had donated to the city of Megara, and Cassius may have held a long-term grudge over this issue. For whatever reasons, Cassius organized the assassination of Caesar on March 15, 44, and he recruited Marcus Junius Brutus in order to give moral credibility to the plot. Although Cassius may have resented the fact that Caesar had given an important praetorship to Brutus instead of to him (and even Caesar had said that Cassius had been the better-qualified candidate), Cassius subordinated his own personal concerns to the political end he wished to achieve. Members of the conspiracy included Casca, one of two contemporaries named Cinna, Decimus Brutus, and Tullius Cimber. Some sources say that as many as sixty individuals were involved in the assassination plot.

Plutarch indicates that the Cnidian teacher Artemidorus may have unsuccessfully tried to warn Caesar on the day of Caesar’s death, and Caesar may have held an unread written warning in his hands as he died. Initially after the murder, the conspirators had reason to believe that they had been successful in the goals they had set in the assassination of Caesar. After Caesar died, Brutus gave a successful speech explaining the reasons behind the assassination. At first, it appeared as though the conspiracy would have the political impact Cassius and his allies had desired. Although the senate promptly recognized Caesar as a god, to help appease the military veterans of his campaigns a general amnesty was declared, and Brutus and Cassius both initially received honors and politically and militarily significant posts.

While Cassius needed to have Brutus involved in the assassination plot in order to give it credibility, Brutus lacked Cassius’s ability to plan ahead for Roman government after the death of Caesar. Brutus foolishly insisted that the conspirators spare Marc Antony, whose funeral oration for Caesar turned the bulk of public opinion against the conspirators, particularly when the crowds learned that Caesar’s will had left a bequest to every Roman citizen. Popular anger led to the murder of the Cinna who had not been involved in the conspiracy.

The conspirators thus found themselves increasingly isolated in Italy. As a result, Brutus departed for Macedonia and Cassius for Syria, where he had earlier successful experience as a Roman general and hoped to rally support. Cassius put his military prowess to efficient use, and in 43 b.c.e. he defeated an army led by Dolabella, whom Marc Antony had sent east to oppose him.

Despite his military successes and the addition to his army of troops brought by Brutus, who joined him, Cassius found himself in a difficult situation in 42 b.c.e., when Marc Antony and Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian marched east to oppose Brutus and Cassius. Cassius attempted to confront the military test he faced at the Battle of Philippi with courage. As a convinced Epicurean, Cassius apparently distrusted the influence of the senses, especially when individuals were under stress. According to Plutarch’s account, the more rational Cassius reassured Brutus when Brutus claimed to have seen an evil spirit that threatened to meet him at Philippi. Unlike Brutus, Cassius did not believe in spirits; at least, he doubted their power to affect the living and take on a human appearance.

At Philippi, Antony and Octavian had twenty-eight legions to oppose nineteen legions under the command of the co-conspirators. Brutus and Cassius faced a difficult military situation, and Cassius wished to postpone battle in order to take advantage of his troops’ superior supplies. Brutus and Cassius did not consider their situation hopeless when they parted to assume their respective battle commands, although they decided that they would kill themselves if they were defeated. Miscalculation played a large role in the fact that Cassius lay dead at the end of the battle, having committed suicide by running on the sword he had used to kill Caesar. For many years, Cassius’s Parthian freedman Pindarus had been pledged to assist in Cassius’s suicide if requested, and Cassius decided to die when he thought, erroneously, that the initial battle had gone as badly for Brutus as it had for him.

Because he survived Cassius, Brutus performed the last rites for his co-conspirator, having his body wrapped and sent to Thaos for burial. A somber Brutus mourned Cassius as a man whose like would not be seen again, and Cassius’s death probably marked a dramatic turning point in Roman history. The republican form of government, which had followed the overthrow of the early monarchy by a purported ancestor of Brutus, gave way to a more efficient Imperial form of government.

While no verifiable statement survives of the political ideals that brought Cassius to Philippi, a speech attributed by Appian to Cassius does. In the speech, Cassius reviewed the events of the preceding three years and honored the bond between soldiers and their leaders. Cassius claimed that the tyrannicides held no personal enmity for Caesar but possessed a justified concern for the preservation of Roman republican institutions.

Significance

In modern terms, Cassius might be compared to senators who aspire to the presidency and never quite achieve their goal. He sincerely believed in the traditional republican ideals that had governed the Roman Republic for centuries, despite the fact that the acquisition of an empire logically necessitated changes in Rome’s governmental structure to govern unruly subject peoples. With Cassius’s suicide, the old Roman Republic was doomed. His ally Brutus died three weeks later, as Brutus followed Cassius’s example in taking his own life. Despite the fact that Octavian, later Augustus, represented the future of Rome, Cassius was not forgotten. Among the ancient historians, however, only Appian showed respect for him as a political as well as a military leader.

Cassius’s namesake descendant in the following century, who became a noted legal scholar, was exiled from Rome by Nero for his devotion to outmoded republican ideals, although he managed to die peacefully in Rome under the more moderate Vespasian. In later centuries, those seeking to justify assassination often turned to the example of Brutus and Cassius, although Cassius never obtained the respect widely granted Brutus. William Shakespeare’s fictional description of Cassius as a “lean and hungry” man has remained the characteristic view of Cassius held by later generations.

Bibliography

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Selected Letters. Translated, with an introduction, by D. R. H. Shackleton Bailey. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. Cassius and his co-conspirator Marcus Brutus corresponded with Cicero. They shared a similar devotion to traditional Roman republican ideals and an aversion to Julius Caesar. Cicero approved of the assassination of Caesar; he did, however, regret that Caesar’s assassins had left the apparatus necessary to create a monarchy intact. A January 45 b.c.e. letter from Cassius to Cicero reveals the former’s basic philosophical convictions. In a cogent expression of Epicurean philosophy, Cassius holds that one cannot attain pleasure without living rightly and justly.

Dio Cassius. The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. In this history, Dio Cassius covers the period immediately after the deaths of Brutus and Cassius. He claims that Agrippa threatened Octavian (Augustus) with the fate of Julius Caesar unless he proceeded toward monarchy. Agrippa warned Octavian that he would find his own Brutus and Cassius unless he moved resolutely to consolidate power.

Plutarch. Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Plutarch discusses Cassius in his life of Julius Caesar. In this selection, Plutarch has Caesar describe both Brutus and Cassius as “pale and thin.” In his sketch of Caesar, Plutarch refers his readers to his “Life of Brutus.” He also stresses that Cassius employed the dagger he had used against Caesar to kill himself and discusses the many supernatural signs that purportedly surrounded the death of Caesar.

Plutarch. Makers of Rome: Nine Lives. Translated, with an introduction, by Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Dorset Press, 1985. This selection includes the life of Brutus, the respected co-conspirator Cassius recruited to assassinate Caesar. According to Plutarch’s account, Brutus hated the concentration of power in Caesar’s hands, and Cassius hated Caesar. Plutarch also describes Cassius’s suicide at Philippi and how it may have been prompted by poor eyesight and error.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, with Related Readings. Edited by Dom Saliani, Chris Ferguson, and Tim Scott. Mason, Ohio: South-Western College, 1997. A dramatic portrayal of Caesar’s assassination. Shakespeare’s account was based on Plutarch and perhaps on Appian. In addition, Shakespeare may have consulted portrayals of the same events by other Elizabethan dramatists. Shakespeare presents Brutus as noble in his motivations for tyrannicide but implies that Cassius was correctly described by Caesar as “lean and hungry” and motivated by ambition.