Did Caesar really say “Et tu, Brute?”

What the ancient sources say

Caesar was killed on March 15, 44 BC, the Ides of March, by senators led by Cassius and Marcus Brutus. Both had been pardoned by Caesar after the civil war. Our fullest account comes from Suetonius, who wrote his life of Caesar about a century and a half later.

And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, “You too, my child?”

Notice what Suetonius prefers: silence. The Greek words, kai su, teknon, “you too, child,” are only something “some have written.” Plutarch, the other great ancient biographer, has Caesar fight back until he sees Brutus among the daggers, then pull his toga over his head and stop resisting. No ancient writer puts the Latin words Et tu, Brute in his mouth.

Where “Et tu, Brute?” comes from

Not from Rome. William Shakespeare put it in Caesar’s mouth in Julius Caesar, first performed in 1599: “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” He was borrowing a Latin tag already heard on the English stage before him. Shakespeare’s line was so good that it replaced the history. Today it is the standard way to accuse a friend of betrayal.

What “my child” might mean

If Caesar did say “You too, child?”, what did he mean? Some readers took it literally, because Caesar had an affair with Brutus’s mother, Servilia, and ancient gossip wondered if Brutus was his son. Most historians doubt that; Caesar was only about fifteen when Brutus was born. Others hear a curse rather than a lament: a Greek phrase meaning “you’ll get yours too, kid.” Either way, it is a rumor about a rumor.

How the murder really went

The Senate met that day not in the Forum but in a hall beside Pompey’s theater, on the Field of Mars. Its ruins lie today in Largo di Torre Argentina, a sunken square in Rome now famous for its cats; Shakespeare moved the scene to the Capitol. Going in, Caesar teased the soothsayer Spurinna: the Ides of March have come. Yes, said Spurinna, but not gone. Inside, Tillius Cimber grabbed Caesar’s toga and Casca struck first. Caesar fell at the foot of Pompey’s statue with twenty-three wounds.

The killers ended a man, not the system that made him. His eighteen-year-old heir, Octavian, would defeat them at Philippi in 42 BC and become Augustus, the first emperor, in 27 BC.