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Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death

Caesar's funeral drama: anger and revenge after death

The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC drove tensions sky-high in ancient Rome. As Jessica Clarke reveals, plays staged at his funeral were carefully chosen to inflame anger and incite revenge on his killers

Published: July 10, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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On 20 March 44 BC, a violent death in Rome was about to send assembled masses into uproar – sparking pandemonium that threatened to engulf the city.

The incident described by the ancient biographer Suetonius wasn’t a real murder but, rather, the climax of a theatre show. If we reconstruct the performance, using both Suetonius’s writing and fragments of the scripts that survive from the time, we can picture the leading actor standing in the centre of the stage before a packed auditorium. He would have raised his sword over his head and declaimed boldly, his voice ringing out across the stands: “What, did I save these men so that they might murder me?” With these words, he would have plunged the blade into his chest. Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ slowly and dramatically in front of his enthralled audience.

Cries of sorrow broke out from the audience, Suetonius tells us, and shouts of indignation were raised against the characters who had instigated his suicide. Like so many other theatre shows at the time, which are recorded for us by the ancient writer, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, this performance – staged in the last years of the collapsing Roman Republic – caused a volcanic reaction among the crowd.

Falling forward onto the stage, he would then ‘die’ dramatically in front of his enthralled audience

The performance was part of the funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. Five days earlier, the Roman general and dictator had been stabbed to death at a senate meeting by a group of conspirators. The city had gone into mourning, and a huge celebration had been organised to commemorate Caesar’s military and political achievements. It would include the usual eulogy and burning of the funeral pyre – but the centrepiece of the event would comprise two magnificent theatre shows.

Incendiary shows

First came the Contest for the Arms of Achilles, set during the legendary Trojan War. In it, Greek heroes Ajax and Odysseus argue over who should keep the sword and shield of their deceased comrade. Odysseus wins the debate and is proclaimed the victor. Unable to bear his defeat, Ajax takes his own life.

According to Suetonius, this staging of the mythical story was designed to provoke a visceral reaction in the crowd – one of intense “pity and indignation” for the wrongful death of the great hero. He also informs us that the tumult continued into the performance of a second play, Electra, which also retells a Greek mythological story. Set a few years after the events of the Trojan War, it follows the story of the eponymous young heroine, who seeks revenge on her father’s assassins. With the help of her brother, Orestes, she exacts her retribution and returns the throne to its rightful heir.

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Suetonius recounts that this performance, like the first, was greeted with “shouts of indignation” from the crowd. Rome, already a tinderbox of intrigue and rival factions, threatened to erupt into chaos.

Events in the city had progressed at a dizzying pace. At the beginning of the year, Julius Caesar had been at the height of his powers. Yet by the middle of March he was dead – and, just days later, his funeral seemed poised to descend into violent mayhem. How had popular feeling in Rome reached such a climactic fervour? And what could have ignited such violent reactions in the audience at the great leader’s funeral?

A first-century AD bust of Mark Antony, Caesar’s loyal friend who planned the dictator’s funeral (Image by Getty Images)

Assassination plot

Born in Rome in 100 BC, Julius Caesar had advanced swiftly through the ranks of the senate. Aged around 42, he had launched the lengthy campaign that led to the conquest of Gaul. On his return in 49 BC, he had come into conflict with his one-time ally, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – now known as Pompey the Great – defeating him at the battle of Pharsalus the following year. And in January 44 BC he had been elected dictator perpetuo: dictator for life.

This had caused panic among many in the Roman senate. Within the established Republican system, the office of dictator had been traditionally a temporary position held during a period of political or military crisis, with the incumbent expected to relinquish the role once the danger had passed. Now Caesar had, to all intents and purposes, been made the sole and permanent ruler of Rome.

A plot was hatched by those opposed to this new state of affairs, led chiefly by Marcus Junius Brutus – the son of Caesar’s long-term mistress – and Gaius Cassius Longinus, Brutus’s brother-in-law. On the appointed day, Caesar would come to a senate meeting – and there he would be set upon with daggers.

The now-familiar story goes that Caesar, waking early on the morning of the Ides (15th) of March, was warned by his worried wife, Calpurnia, not to go to the senate that day. As she told her husband, she had seen omens that foretold calamity if he left the safety of their home. But Caesar did not heed his wife’s advice, and attended the meeting as planned. As he took his seat of honour, the plotters gathered around him; suddenly, one tugged at his toga to reveal his chest – a signal to the others to act.

Caesar was felled by 23 stab wounds, or so the story goes, uttering not a word until he saw the young Brutus among the assassins – when, as he lay dying, he murmured in Greek: “And you, child?”

The conspirators had planned to drag his corpse to the river Tiber and to confiscate Caesar’s property. Instead, fearful of the dictator’s loyal friend Mark Antony – who’d been kept from the senate meeting that day – they fled, abandoning the lifeless body. According to Suetonius, three slaves eventually came and carried Caesar’s body home, with one arm hanging down from the litter.

A crowd of people stand around a raised platform. On the platform, a man dressed in white stands, holding up a bloodied piece of cloth

Mark Antony displays Caesar’s bloodied toga while delivering an impassioned eulogy at his comrade’s funeral, shown in a 19th-century painting (Image by Getty Images)

Read more | Alternate history: what if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated?

The assassins were right to fear Mark Antony’s reaction, which was both cunning and effective. Rather than seeking direct violent retribution against those who had plotted against his friend, Antony set about planning a spectacular funeral, orchestrating an event designed to stir up popular goodwill towards Caesar and fan the flames of hatred against the conspirators. And he began with
a clever selection of plays.

Show of strength

Theatre performances had long comprised a traditional element of Roman funerals. The practice seems to have originated in the Etruscan civilisation who may have introduced wrestling and gladiatorial combats in the eighth century BC. In Rome, the earliest evidence of such shows relates to the funeral of Junius Brutus Pera in 264 BC, at which his sons seem to have organised gladiatorial shows on a temporary wooden stage.

A stone carving shows 6 men dancing and playing games, wearing helmets and holding spears

Games and dances are depicted on an Etruscan tomb monument from the fifth century BC. This ancient Italic civilisation seems to have started the practice of staging funeral performances (Image by Getty Images)

Over time, such events became increasingly lavish; indeed, sumptuary laws were passed to curtail the greatest excesses of the wealthy elite. These upper-class funerals might include not only stage shows but also a procession of actors dressed up in costumes and masks to resemble deceased members of a great Roman family. Parading through the city’s streets, the procession celebrated the passage of the deceased from death to life, and reminded the crowds of that aristocratic family’s eminent lineage.

The spectacular funeral fanned the flames of hatred against the conspirators

Why did Antony select The Contest for the Arms of Achilles and Electra to be performed at Caesar’s funeral? What was he hoping to convey to his Roman audiences?

On the surface, these seem rather odd choices, particularly Electra; that play (possibly a Latin translation of Sophocles’s earlier work, written in Greek in the fifth century BC) was by Atilius, whose work does not seem to have been well regarded in Rome. One late Republican commentator described his writing style as “iron” and “very harsh”, and Cicero decries Atilius’s Electra as being rather a bad play.

However, exploring the two plays’ thematic content might reveal Antony’s motivation for his production choices. Written by Pacuvius, the Arms of Achilles begins just after the eponymous hero has been killed by an arrow shot from the Trojan ramparts. In the verbal contest for Achilles’ sword and shield that follows his death, Odysseus outsmarts Ajax, securing victory through cunning and subtle arguments. It might be seen as an apt metaphor for the situation in Rome in March 44 BC: two sides struggle for control of a powerful weapon, with the loyal Ajax ultimately losing to the duplicity of his comrades.

A stone relief shows two people bent over in mourning, while a horse stands to the side

Electra and Orestes mourn their murdered father, King Agamemnon, in a fifth-century BC relief. A play of this story, chosen for Caesar’s funeral, highlighted the virtue of vengeance (Image by Getty Images)

If this was the message Antony intended to convey, he seems to have been successful. Suetonius recounts that the audience expressed furious outrage as they watched Ajax take his own life on stage. Did they draw a parallel between the death of the legendary Greek hero and the murder of Julius Caesar?

Electra’s story of revenge, too, features themes that may have been deliberately intended to evoke the contemporary political situation: a wrongful murder and the righteousness of seeking retribution. Little wonder, then, that emotions were running high by the time Mark Antony took to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum later that day.

Inflammatory eulogy

The exact words spoken by Antony during that famous eulogy are now lost. However, according to Suetonius, the central part of his speech was the recitation of a senatorial decree honouring Julius Caesar. As Antony read, he lingered over the passage of the decree in which every senator swore to protect Caesar – highlighting the contrast between these faithful promises and the events that had unfolded on 15 March.

As a final flourish, Antony is said to have displayed Caesar’s bloodied toga to the crowd, pointing out each of the stab wounds. It was clearly a powerful performance, much like those that had just taken place in the theatre – and one that had a powerful effect.

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As the funeral bier bearing Caesar’s body was carried into the Forum, the crowd rushed forward and set it alight before it reached the official site of the cremation. Bystanders heaped dry branches on top of the body, smashing up the seats and benches on which they had been sitting and adding them to the flames. Musicians and actors reportedly tore off their robes and threw them into the fire, while women tossed in their jewellery and their children’s amulets.

As the mass outpouring of grief reached a climax, the fired-up masses turned from the flaming pyre and rampaged through the streets of Rome. Bent on destruction, they surged towards the houses of Brutus and Cassius – but were prevented from attacking by sentinels posted outside. Turning away, the crowd came across the unsuspecting poet Helvius Cinna – and, mistaking him for his near-namesake Cornelius Cinna, who had supported the conspiracy, killed him. They cut off his head and, mounting it on a spear, paraded it through the streets of Rome.

A stone bust of a man, looking towards the right

A bust of Brutus by Michelangelo, c1539–40. Fleeing Rome after Caesar’s funeral, Brutus was defeated by Mark Antony in 42 BC (Image by Getty Images)

Although Brutus and Cassius survived the night, they soon had to flee the city with their fellow conspirators. It would take Antony more than two years to track them down, finally facing them in October 42 BC at the battle of Philippi. And it was Antony who emerged victorious from this clash – as from the battle for popular approval in Rome.

Caesar’s funeral began with theatre shows and ended with a bloody riot. With their themes of duplicity, murder and righteous revenge, the plays seem to have been selected very deliberately to provoke and nurture hysteria in the massed crowds. It is surprising, therefore, that very little about them is mentioned in accounts of the funeral, which tend to focus much more on the eulogy given by Mark Antony.

When we think of theatre today, we think perhaps of Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway – of decorous, darkly lit auditoria filled with well-dressed spectators. But in the ancient world, the theatre could be as riotous and politically impactful as any rhetoric declaimed from the speaker’s platform.

Jessica Clarke’s new book, A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, will be published by Liverpool University Press in December

This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine