“‘Well, I never worked on the Almore case,’ Webber snapped. ‘I don’t know who stuck the first knife into Julius Caesar either. Stick to the point, can’t you?’”
This rebuke to Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake comes in one of the PI’s many confrontations with the police. It assumes that we all know Caesar was murdered in the Theater of Pompey by a band of conspirators, even if, like Captain Webber, we may not know who struck the first blow. Shakespeare has a lot to do with this familiarity, and he helped ensure that we know who struck the final blow, as the dictator dies with the last words, “Et tu, Brute! Then fall Caesar.” On Shakespeare’s reading, Brutus, “Caesar’s darling” who admires and likes Caesar personally, nevertheless leads the men who murder him because he believes that it is the right thing to do. Thus, Mark Antony dubs Brutus’s attack on Caesar as “the most unkindest cut of all” while still judging Brutus the “noblest Roman of them all.”
Caesar’s death remains among the most spectacular assassinations of major political figures, a scene that has inspired art, drama, and literature through the ages. Those with an interest in history are likely to know that Caesar’s career occurred at a critical period for Rome, when the city was riven by infighting and violence. None of this began or ended with him, but he was one of the most conspicuous players. When
