Day 5

 

Day 5 – Shakespeare & Plato

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Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2

Antony’s Funeral Oration: “Friends, Romans, countrymen”

Context:
Brutus has just spoken, appealing to reason. Now Antony addresses the crowd. Outwardly he honors the conspirators, but slowly, through irony, repetition, and theatrical display of Caesar’s wounds, he stirs the mob to fury. This is rhetoric as fire.

Extract (~55 lines, slightly abridged to keep it one continuous reading):

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

[He weeps. Citizens moved.]

But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O masters! if I were dispos’d to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here’s a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, ’tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament—
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on;
’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii.
Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d;
And as he pluck’d his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Caesar follow’d it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolv’d
If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no;
For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel:
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov’d him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us.
O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar’s vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr’d, as you see, with traitors.

Reflection prompts:

• Copy the line “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” beside “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” Compare reason vs. passion.
• Read Antony’s speech aloud with irony: every “honourable man” carries a sting.
• Think: which speech — Brutus or Antony — would have swayed you more as a citizen?

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Plato: Phaedo

The second argument: recollection

Context:
Socrates now turns to the idea that learning is really remembering — that we recall truths the soul knew before birth. If this is so, then the soul must have existed before our bodily life.

Extract (~3–4 paragraphs, Jowett translation):

“We say, do we not, that when a man is reminded of something, this is recollection? And does it not occur in this way: when knowledge of one thing arises in a man from the sight or thought of another? For example, when a man sees a lyre or a garment of a friend, and is reminded of the friend himself, this is recollection.

“Well, then, is it not true that we are reminded of one thing by another, and that this process is recollection? Now see if this applies to our subject. Is it not true that when men are reminded, for example, of equality of sticks and stones, they are carried in thought to that absolute equality which is different from them? And does this not show that we had knowledge of equality before we first saw equal things? For none of these equal objects is equal as that equality itself is; yet from seeing them we conceive of that which is different from them.

“Whence then have we this idea? Must it not be that we had knowledge before birth, and that having lost it at birth, we are reminded of it afterwards by the use of the senses? This is what we mean by learning—that we are recovering what we already knew.

“If this is true of equality, it is true also of the absolute good, the absolute beautiful, and of all things which we mark with the name of absolute. Thus, we must have had knowledge before we were born; and if we had knowledge before we were born, then our souls existed before we were born, which proves that the soul is immortal.”

Reflection prompts:

• Copy the phrase “We are recovering what we already knew.”
• Compare with Antony’s strategy: he “reminds” the crowd of their love for Caesar — is that also a kind of recollection?
• Does this theory resonate with you — that learning is memory of the eternal? Or does it feel like a poetic metaphor rather than a proof?

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✨ Today’s resonance:
Antony awakens in the crowd a memory of love and outrage; Socrates claims all learning is a memory of truths known before birth. Both speeches stir remembrance — one of passion, the other of eternal forms.