According to the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Elizabethan education was firmly rooted in learning and employing rhetorical devices and appeals in one’s writing. Though Shakespeare was not formally educated like many contemporary writers, he employs rhetorical devices throughout his writings, highlighting the persuasive power of his characters’ words. The power of rhetoric is overt in the political context of Julius Caesar. 

In Julius Caesar, the most skillful use of rhetorical appeals comes in Act III, Scene 2 in Brutus’s address to the plebeians and Mark Antony’s funerary speech for Caesar. Both characters aim to convince the crowd to take their side; Anthony wants revenge, and, as he had a hand in Caesar’s assassination, Brutus’s life depends on winning the crowd over. They both make appeals to the classical elements of rhetoric: pathos, an appeal to emotion; ethos, an appeal to ethics/credibility; and logos, an appeal to reason and logic. 

Mark Antony proves to be the most persuasive, making a greater appeal to pathos than Brutus. Brutus relies on the logic that Caesar deserved to die because he was ambitious. He stakes his claim on his own suffering: Caesar was a dear friend, and consequently, the decision to kill him was not made lightly. However, his appeal to love and friendship seems calculated. Mark Antony, on the other hand, demonstrates his love for Caesar rather than merely describing it, reminding the crowd of the many deeds Caesar accomplished for the plebeians. He also dramatically reveals Caesar’s wounded, dead body—a shocking sight that ultimately incites the already emotional crowd to violence. Mark Antony incites a mutiny through his clever use of rhetoric, never actually speaking out against the conspirators and instead using the emotional impact of his words to persuade his audience.

The Roman Republic placed a high premium on honor—on leading a life that would tolerate public scrutiny—and Shakespeare’s play emphasizes this aspect of Roman culture. For the characters, questions of morality are inseparable from questions of personal dignity; an unethical act is both wrong and disgraceful, and disgrace (as the prevalence of suicide indicates) is conceived of as worse than death. As stringent as honor’s demands are, however, Shakespeare also shows them to be ambiguous. This tension between competing understandings of honor results in much of the play’s tragedy. 

Brutus’s moral dilemma, which drives the action of the first two acts of the play, exemplifies this tension. Brutus is driven by virtue, morality, love for the Roman Republic, and the honor that underpins all three. Notably, it is to honor that Cassius first appeals when he speaks about the threat of dictatorship: “[H]onor is the subject of my story / […] I had as lief not be as live to be / In awe of such a thing as I myself” (I.2.94-98). To accept a dictatorship and the revocation of one’s liberties is to debase oneself and one’s fellow citizens, Cassius suggests, and his argument is persuasive. However, Brutus must also wrestle with the emotional, ethical, and moral implications of killing a man who is also a close friend. This breach of trust, too, entails dishonor, as does the general subterfuge the plan necessitates; upon seeing the cloaked conspirators, Brutus laments, “O conspiracy / Sham’st thou to show thy dang’rous brow by night / When evils are most free?” (II.1.84-5). Brutus is thus tormented by a state of affairs in which every course seems dishonorable. 

Brutus’s efforts to satisfy honor regardless result in several miscalculations, including taking Mark Antony at his word that he will not speak out against the conspirators at Caesar’s funeral oration. Mark Antony, a more pragmatic operator, seizes the opportunity to point out the tension underlying Brutus’s actions. His repeated, sarcastic claim that Brutus is an “honorable man” is most obviously an indictment of Brutus’s betrayal of a friend, but the play suggests that it is also straightforwardly true: It is precisely because Brutus is honorable that he has acted as he has. The consequences become clearer still as Brutus’s trust in Mark Antony’s honor spirals into civil war, undoing all Brutus’s efforts to save the Republic. Brutus’s death by suicide to avoid capture is both the culmination of his sense of honor and a testament to how destructive it can be. That even Antony, his enemy, respects and venerates Brutus because of his honor contributes to the tragic irony of the play’s conclusion: Brutus’s honor may be commendable, but Antony has survived largely because he lacks it.