Why did Marcus Brutus kill Julius Caesar in real life?
Caesar was an unrepentant populist who curried favor with the plebians, the “common people” of Rome. Caesar used his popularity with the masses to gain an enormous amount of power, as well as his massively successful military campaign in Gaul, which made him the wealthiest man in Rome. Brutus was a patrician and part of the oligarchy that had ruled Rome for centuries. The patrician class were the nobility of Rome, and they controlled the Senate, which was Rome’s governing body during the Republic. There was a long history of struggle and conflict between the patricians and the plebs, as the plebs were always seeking to curb the abuses of the aristocracy and limit their power over Rome and the people. Oligarchs do tend to be exploitive. Anyway, Brutus, Cassius et al. were alarmed at Caesar’s rise in power and viewed it as a threat to the longheld dominance of the patricians over Rome. Also, the patricians were enormously proud of the Republic and were forever vigilant about the return o
