Caesar and Cleopatra

Caesar and Cleopatra, a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw, is a fictionalized account
of the relationship between Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. It was first published with Captain
Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in Shaw's 1901 collection, Three Plays for
Puritans. It was first performed in a single staged reading at Newcastle upon Tyne on 15 March
1899, to secure the copyright. The play was produced in New York in 1906 and in London at
the Savoy Theatre in 1907.

Plot
The play has a prologue and an "Alternative to the Prologue". The prologue
consists of the Egyptian god Ra addressing the audience directly, as if he
could see them in the theater (i.e., breaking the fourth wall). He says that
Pompey represents the old Rome and Caesar represents the new Rome. The
gods favored Caesar, according to Ra, because he "lived the life they had
given him boldly". Ra recounts the conflict between Caesar and Pompey,
their battle at Pharsalia, and Pompey's eventual assassination in Egypt at the
hands of Lucius Septimius.
In "An Alternative to the Prologue", the captain of Cleopatra's guard is
warned that Caesar has landed and is invading Egypt. Cleopatra has been
driven into Syria by her brother, Ptolemy, with whom she is vying for the
Egyptian throne. The messenger warns that Caesar's conquest is inevitable
and irresistible. A Nubian watchman flees to Cleopatra's palace and warns
those inside that Caesar and his armies are less than an hour away. The
guards, knowing of Caesar's weakness for women, plan to persuade him to
proclaim Cleopatrawho may be controllableEgypt's ruler instead of
Ptolemy. They try to locate her, but are told by Cleopatra's nurse, Ftatateeta,
that she has run away.
(
Act I opens with Cleopatra sleeping between the paws of a Sphinx. Caesar,
wandering lonely in the desert night, comes upon the sphinx and speaks to it
profoundly. Cleopatra wakes and, still unseen, replies. At first Caesar
imagines the sphinx is speaking in a girlish voice, then, when Cleopatra
appears, that he is experiencing a dream or, if he is awake, a touch of
madness. She, not recognizing Caesar, thinks him a nice old man and tells
him of her childish fear of Caesar and the Romans. Caesar urges bravery
when she must face the conquerors, then escorts her to her palace.
Cleopatra reluctantly agrees to maintain a queenly presence, but greatly
fears that Caesar will eat her anyway. When the Roman guards arrive and
hail Caesar, Cleopatra suddenly realizes he has been with her all along. She
sobs in relief, and falls into his arms.
Act II. In a hall on the first floor of the royal palace in Alexandria, Caesar
meets King Ptolemy (aged ten), his tutor Theodotus (very

aged), Achillas (general of Ptolemy's troops), and Pothinus (his guardian).

Caesar greets all with courtesy and kindness, but inflexibly demands a
tribute whose amount disconcerts the Egyptians. As an inducement, Caesar
says he will settle the dispute between the claimants for the Egyptian throne
by letting Cleopatra and Ptolemy reign jointly. However, the rivalry exists
because, even though the two are siblings and already married in
accordance with the royal law, they detest each other with a mutual
antipathy no less murderous for being childish. Each claims sole rulership.
Caesar's solution is acceptable to none and his concern for Ptolemy makes
Cleopatra fiercely jealous.
The conference deteriorates into a dispute, with the Egyptians threatening
military action. Caesar, with two legions (three thousand soldiers and a
thousand horsemen), has no fear of the Egyptian army but learns Achillas
also commands a Roman army of occupation, left after a previous Roman
incursion, which could overwhelm his relatively small contingent.
As a defensive measure, Caesar orders Rufio, his military aide, to take over
the palace, a theatre adjacent to it, and Pharos, an island in the harbor
accessible from the palace via a causeway that divides the harbor into
eastern and western sections. From Pharos, which has a defensible
lighthouse at its eastmost tip, those of Caesar's ships anchored on the east
side of the harbor can return to Rome. His ships on the west side are to be
burnt at once. Britannus, Caesar's secretary, proclaims the king and courtiers
prisoners of war, but Caesar, to the dismay of Rufio, allows the captives to
depart. Only Cleopatra (with her retinue), fearing Ptolemy's associates, and
Pothinus (for reasons of his own), choose to remain with Caesar. The others
all depart.
Caesar, intent on developing his strategy, tries to dismiss all other matters
but is interrupted by Cleopatra's nagging for attention. He indulges her
briefly while she speaks amorously of Mark Antony, who restored her father
to his throne when she was twelve years old. Her gushing about the youth
and beauty of Mark Antony are unflattering to Caesar, who is middle-aged
and balding. Caesar nevertheless, impervious to jealousy, makes Cleopatra
happy by promising to send Mark Antony back to Egypt. As she leaves, a
wounded soldier comes to report that Achillas, with his Roman army, is at
hand and that the citizenry is attacking Caesar's soldiers. A siege is
imminent.
Watching from a balcony, Rufio discovers the ships he was ordered to destroy
have been torched by Achillas' forces and are already burning. Meanwhile,
Theodotus, the savant, arrives distraught, anguished because fire from the
blazing ships has spread to the Alexandrian library. Caesar does not
sympathize, saying it is better that the Egyptians should live their lives than
dream them away with the help of books. As a practicality, he notes the
Egyptian firefighters will be diverted from attacking Caesar's soldiers. At

scene's end, Cleopatra and Britannus help Caesar don his armor and he goes
forth to battle.
Act III. A Roman sentinel stationed on the quay in front of the palace looks
intently, across the eastern harbor, to the west, for activity at the Pharos
lighthouse, now captured and occupied by Caesar. He is watching for signs of
an impending counter-attack by Egyptian forces arriving via ship and by way
of the Heptastadion (a stone causeway spanning the five miles of open water
between the mainland and Pharos Island). The sentinel's vigil is interrupted
by Ftatateeta (Cleopatra's nurse) and Apollodorus the Sicilian (a patrician
amateur of the arts), accompanied by a retinue of porters carrying a bale of
carpets, from which Cleopatra is to select a gift appropriate for Caesar.
Cleopatra emerges from the palace, shows little interest in the carpets, and
expresses a desire to visit Caesar at the lighthouse. The sentinel tells her she
is a prisoner and orders her back inside the palace. Cleopatra is enraged,
and Apollodorus, as her champion, engages in swordplay with the sentinel. A
centurion intervenes and avers Cleopatra will not be allowed outside the
palace until Caesar gives the order. She is sent back to the palace, where she
may select a carpet for delivery to Caesar. Apollodorus, who is not a prisoner,
will deliver it since he is free to travel in areas behind the Roman lines. He
hires a small boat, with a single boatmen, for the purpose.
The porters leave the palace bearing a rolled carpet. They complain about its
weight, but only Ftatateeta, suffering paroxysms of anxiety, knows that
Cleopatra is hidden in the bundle. The sentinel, however, alerted by
Ftatateeta's distress, becomes suspicious and attempts, unsuccessfully, to
recall the boat after it departs.
Meanwhile, Rufio, eating dates and resting after the day's battle, hears
Caesar speaking somberly of his personal misgivings and predicting they will
lose the battle because age has rendered him inept. Rufio diagnoses
Caesar's woes as signs of hunger and gives him dates to eat. Caesar's
outlook brightens as he eats them. He is himself again when Britannus
exultantly approaches bearing a heavy bag containing incriminating letters
that have passed between Pompey's associates and their army, now
occupying Egypt. Caesar scorns to read them, deeming it better to convert
his enemies to friends than to waste his time with prosecutions; he casts the
bag into the sea.
As Cleopatra's boat arrives, the falling bag breaks its prow and it quickly
sinks, barely allowing time for Apollodorus to drag the carpet and its queenly
contents safe ashore. Caesar unrolls the carpet and discovers Cleopatra, who
is distressed because of the rigors of her journey and even more so when she
finds Caesar too preoccupied with military matters to accord her much
attention. Matters worsen when Britannus, who has been observing the
movements of the Egyptian army, reports that the enemy now controls the
causeway and is also approaching rapidly across the island. Swimming to a
Roman ship in the eastern harbor becomes the sole possibility for escape.

Apollodorus dives in readily and Caesar follows, after privately instructing

Rufio and Britannus to toss Cleopatra into the water so she can hang on
while he swims to safety. They do so with great relish, she screaming
mightily, then Rufio takes the plunge. Britannus cannot swim, so he is
instructed to defend himself as well as possible until a rescue can be
arranged. A friendly craft soon rescues all the swimmers.
Act IV. Six months elapse with Romans and Cleopatra besieged in the palace
in Alexandria. Cleopatra and Pothinus, who is a prisoner of war, discuss what
will happen when Caesar eventually leaves and disagree over whether
Cleopatra or Ptolemy should rule. They part; Cleopatra to be hostess at a
feast prepared for Caesar and his lieutenants, and Pothinus to tell Caesar
that Cleopatra is a traitress who is only using Caesar to help her gain the
Egyptian throne. Caesar considers that a natural motive and is not offended.
But Cleopatra is enraged at Pothinus' allegation and secretly orders her
nurse, Ftatateeta, to kill him.
At the feast the mood is considerably restrained by Caesar's ascetic
preference for simple fare and barley water versus exotic foods and wines.
However, conversation grows lively when world-weary Caesar suggests to
Cleopatra they both leave political life, search out the Nile's source and a city
there. Cleopatra enthusiastically agrees and, to name the city, seeks help
from the God of the Nile, who is her favorite god.
The festivities are interrupted by a scream, followed by a thud: Pothinus has
been murdered and his body thrown from the roof down to the beach. The
besieging Egyptians, both army and civilian, are enraged by the killing of
Pothinus, who was a popular hero, and they begin to storm the palace.
Cleopatra claims responsibility for the slaying and Caesar reproaches her for
taking shortsighted vengeance, pointing out that his clemency towards
Pothinus and the other prisoners has kept the enemy at bay. Doom seems
inevitable, but then they learn that reinforcements, commanded
by Mithridates of Pergamos have engaged the Egyptian army. With the threat
diminished, Caesar draws up a battle plan and leaves to speak to the troops.
Meanwhile, Rufio realizes Ftatateeta was Pothinus' killer, so he kills her in
turn. Cleopatra, left alone and utterly forlorn discovers the bloodied body
concealed behind a curtain.
Act V is an epilogue. Amidst great pomp and ceremony, Caesar prepares to
leave for Rome. His forces have swept Ptolemy's armies into the Nile, and
Ptolemy himself was drowned when his barge sank. Caesar appoints Rufio
governor of the province and considers freedom for Britannus, who declines
the offer in favor of remaining Caesar's servant. A conversation ensues that
foreshadows Caesar's eventual assassination. As the gangplank is being
extended from the quay to Caesar's ship, Cleopatra, dressed in mourning for
her nurse, arrives. She accuses Rufio of murdering Ftatateeta. Rufio admits
the slaying, but says it was not for the sake of punishment, revenge or
justice: he killed her without malice because she was a potential menace.

Caesar approves the execution because it was not influenced by spurious

moralism. Cleopatra remains unforgiving until Caesar renews his promise to
send Mark Antony to Egypt. That renders her ecstatic as the ship starts
moving out to sea.
Themes
Shaw wants to prove that it was not love but politics that
drew Cleopatra to Julius Caesar. He sees the Roman occupation of ancient
Egypt as similar to the British occupation that was occurring during his time.
[1]
Caesar understands the importance of good government, and values these
things above art and love.[2]
Shaw's philosophy has often been compared to that of Nietzsche.[citation
needed]
Their shared admiration for men of action shows itself in Shaw's
description of Caesar's struggle with Pompey.[citation needed] In the prologue, the
god Ra says, "the blood and iron ye pin your faith on fell before the spirit of
man; for the spirit of man is the will of the gods."
A second theme, apparent both from the text of the play itself and from
Shaw's lengthy notes after the play, is Shaw's belief that people have not
been morally improved by civilization and technology. A line from the
prologue clearly illustrates this point. The god Ra addresses the audience
and says, "ye shall marvel, after your ignorant manner, that men twenty
centuries ago were already just such as you, and spoke and lived as ye speak
and live, no worse and no better, no wiser and no sillier."
Another theme is the value of clemency. Caesar remarks that he will not
stoop to vengeance when confronted with Septimius, the murderer
of Pompey. Caesar throws away letters that would have identified his
enemies in Rome, instead choosing to try to win them to his side. Pothinus
remarks that Caesar doesn't torture his captives. At several points in the
play, Caesar lets his enemies go instead of killing them. The wisdom of this
approach is revealed when Cleopatra orders her nurse to
kill Pothinus because of his "treachery and disloyalty" (but really because of
his insults to her). This probably contrasts with historical fact.[3] The murder
enrages the Egyptian crowd, and but for Mithridates' reinforcements would
have meant the death of all the protagonists. Caesar only endorses the
retaliatory murder of Cleopatra's nurse because it was necessary and
humane.
Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra
Cleopatra's Cure for Baldness

FOR the sake of conciseness in a hurried situation I have made Cleopatra recommend rum. This, I
am afraid, is an anachronism: the only real one in the play. To balance it, I give a couple of the
remedies she actually believed in. They are quoted by Galen from Cleopatra's book on Cosmetic.
"For bald patches, powder red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with oak gum, as much as it will
bear. Put on a rag and apply, having soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam
of nitre, and it worked well."
Several other receipts follow, ending with: "The following is the best of all, acting for fallen hairs,
when applied with oil or pomatum; acts for falling off of eyelashes or for people getting bald all over.
It is wonderful. Of domestic mice burnt, one part; of vine rag burnt, one part; of horse's teeth burnt,
one part; of bear's grease one; of deer's marrow one; of reed bark one. To be pounded when dry, and
mixed with plenty of honey til it gets the consistency of honey; then the bear's grease and marrow to
be mixed (when melted), the medicine to be put in a brass flask, and the bald part rubbed til it
sprouts."
Concerning these ingredients, my fellow-dramatist Gilbert Murray, who, as a Professor of Greek, has
applied to classical antiquity the methods of high scholarship (my own method is pure divination),
writes to me as follows: "Some of this I dont understand, and possibly Galen did not, as he quotes
your heroine's own language. Foam of nitre is, I think, something like soapsuds. Reed bark is an odd
expression. It might mean the outside membrane of a reed: I do not know what it ought to be called.
In the burnt mice receipt I take it that you first mixed the solid powders with honey, and then added
the grease. I expect Cleopatra preferred it because in most of the others you have to lacerate the skin,
prick it, or rub it till it bleeds. I do not know what vine rag is. I translate literally."
Apparent Anachronisms
The only way to write a play which shall convey to the general public an impression of antiquity is to
make the characters speak blank verse and abstain from reference to steam, telegraphy, or any of the
material conditions of their existence. The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that
their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully
struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery. Savagery, they think, became barbarism;
barbarism became ancient civilization; ancient civilization became Pauline Christianity; Pauline
Christianity became Roman Catholicism; Roman Catholicism became the Dark Ages; and the Dark
Ages were finally enlightened by the Protestant instincts of the English race. The whole process is
summed up as Progress with a capital P. And any elderly gentleman of Progressive temperament will
testify that the improvement since he was a boy is enormous.

Now if we count the generations of Progressive elderly gentlemen since, say, Plato, and add together
the successive enormous improvements to which each of them has testified, it will strike us at once
as an unaccountable fact that the world, instead of having been improved in 67 generations out of all
recognition, presents, on the whole, a rather less dignified appearance in Ibsen's Enemy of the
People than in Plato's Republic. And in truth, the period of time covered by history is far too short to
allow of any perceptible progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The notion
that there has been any such Progress since Caesar's time (less than 20 centuries) is too absurd for
discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as
existing in the past exists at the present moment. A British carpenter or stonemason may point out
that he gets twice as much money for his labor as his father did in the same trade, and that his
suburban house, with its bath, its cottage piano, its drawing room suite, and its album of
photographs, would have shamed the plainness of his grandmother's. But the descendants of feudal
barons, living in squalid lodgings on a salary of fifteen shillings a week instead of in castles on
princely revenues, do not congratulate the world on the change. Such changes, in fact, are not to the
point. It has been known, as far back as our records go, that man running wild in the woods is
different from man kennelled in a city slum; that a dog seems to understand a shepherd better than a
hewer of wood and drawer of water can understand an astronomer; and that breeding, gentle
nurture, and luxurious food and shelter will produce a kind of man with whom the common laborer
is socially incompatible. The same thing is true of horses and dogs. Now there is clearly room for
great changes in the world by increasing the percentage of individuals who are carefully bred and
gently nurtured, even to finally making the most of every man and woman born. But that possibility
existed in the days of the Hittites as much as it does today. It does not give the slightest real support
to the common assumption that the civilized contemporaries of the Hittites were unlike their
civilized descendants today.
This would appear the tritest commonplace if it were not that the ordinary citizen's ignorance of the
past combines with his idealization of the present to mislead and flatter him. Our latest book on the
new railway across Asia describes the dulness of the Siberian farmer and the vulgar pursepride of the
Siberian man of business without the least consciousness that the string of contemptuous instances
given might have been saved by writing simply "Farmers and provincial plutocrats in Siberia are
exactly what they are in England." The latest professor descanting on the civilization of the Western
Empire in the fifth century feels bound to assume, in the teeth of his own researches, that the
Christian was one sort of animal and the Pagan another. It might as well be assumed as indeed it
generally is assumed by implication, that a murder committed with a poisoned arrow is different
from a murder committed with a Mauser rifle. All such notions are illusions. Go back to the first
syllable of recorded time, and there you will find your Christian and your Pagan, your yokel and your

poet, helot and hero, Don Quixote and Sancho, Tamino and Papageno, Newton and bushman unable
to count eleven, all alive and contemporaneous, and all convinced that they are the heirs of all the
ages and the privileged recipients of the truth [all others damnable heresies], just as you have them
today, flourishing in countries each of which is the bravest and best that ever sprang at Heaven's
command from out the azure main.
Again, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature," meaning that cotton is cheap and
that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased
command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command
relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from
the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command
over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the
overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us. If manufacturing
activity means Progress, the town must be more advanced than the country; and the field laborers
and village artisans of today must be much less changed from the servants of Job than the proletariat
of modern London from the proletariat of Caesar's Rome. Yet the cockney proletarian is so inferior to
the village laborer that it is only by steady recruiting from the country that London is kept alive. This
does not seem as if the change since Job's time were Progress in the popular sense: quite the reverse.
The common stock of discoveries in physics has accumulated a little: that is all.
One more illustration. Is the Englishman prepared to admit that the American is his superior as a
human being? I ask this question because the scarcity of labor in America relatively to the demand
for it has led to a development of machinery there, and a consequent "increase of command over
Nature" which makes many of our English methods appear almost medieval to the up-to-date
Chicagoan. This means that the American has an advantage over the Englishman of exactly the same
nature that the Englishman has over the contemporaries of Cicero. Is the Englishman prepared to
draw the same conclusion in both cases? I think not. The American, of course, will draw it cheerfully;
but I must then ask him whether, since a modern negro has a greater "command over Nature" than
Washington had, we are also to accept the conclusion, involved in his former one, that humanity has
progressed from Washington to the2fin de siecle 4 negro.
Finally, I would point out that if life is crowned by its success and devotion in industrial organization
and ingenuity, we had better worship the ant and the bee[as moralists urge us to do in our
childhood], and humble ourselves before the arrogance of the birds of Aristophanes.

My reason then for ignoring the popular conception of Progress in Caesar and Cleopatra is that there
is no reason to suppose that any Progress has taken place since their time. But even if I shared the
popular delusion, I do not see that I could have made any essential difference in the play. I can only
imitate humanity as I know it. Nobody knows whether Shakespear thought that ancient Athenian
joiners, weavers, or bellows menders were any different from Elizabethan ones; but it is quite certain
that he could not have made them so, unless, indeed, he had played the literary man and made
Quince say, not "Is all our company here?" but "Bottom: was not that Socrates that passed us at the
Piraeus with Glaucon and Polemarchus on his way to the house of Kephalus?" And so on.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra was only sixteen when Caesar went to Egypt; but in Egypt sixteen is a riper age than it is in
England. The childishness I have ascribed to her, as far as it is childishness of character and not lack
of experience, is not a matter of years. It may be observed in our own climate at the present day in
many women of fifty. It is a mistake to suppose that the difference between wisdom and folly has
anything to do with the difference between physical age and physical youth. Some women are
younger at seventy than most women at seventeen.
It must be borne in mind, too, that Cleopatra was a queen, and was therefore not the typical Greekcultured, educated Egyptian lady of her time. To represent her by any such type would be as absurd
as to represent George IV by a type founded on the attainments of Sir Isaac Newton. It is true that an
ordinarily well educated Alexandrian girl of her time would no more have believed bogey stories
about the Romans than the daughter of a modern Oxford professor would believe them about the
Germans [though, by the way, it is possible to talk great nonsense at Oxford about foreigners when
we are at war with them]. But I do not feel bound to believe that Cleopatra was well educated. Her
father, the illustrious Flute Blower, was not at all a parent of the Oxford professor type. And
Cleopatra was a chip of the old block.
Britannus
I find among those who have read this play in manuscript a strong conviction that an ancient Briton
could not possibly have been like a modern one. I see no reason to adopt this curious view. It is true
that the Roman and Norman conquests must have for a time disturbed the normal British type
produced by the climate. But Britannus, born before these events, represents the unadulterated
Briton who fought Caesar and impressed Roman observers much as we should expect the ancestors
of Mr Podsnap to impress the cultivated Italians of their time.

I am told that it is not scientific to treat national character as a product of climate. This only shews
the wide difference between common knowledge and the intellectual game called science. We have
men of exactly the same stock, and speaking the same language, growing in Great Britain, in Ireland,
and in America. The result is three of the most distinctly marked nationalities under the sun. Racial
characteristics are quite another matter. The difference between a Jew and a Gentile has nothing to
do with the difference between an Englishman and a German. The characteristics of Britannus are
local characteristics, not race characteristics. In an ancient Briton they would, I take it, be
exaggerated, since modern Britain, disforested, drained, urbanified and consequently cosmopolized,
is presumably less characteristically British than Caesar's Britain.
And again I ask does anyone who, in the light of a competent knowledge of his own age, has studied
history from contemporary documents, believe that 67 generations of promiscuous marriage have
made any appreciable difference in the human fauna of these isles? Certainly I do not.
Julius Caesar
As to Caesar himself, I have purposely avoided the usual anachronism of going to Caesar's books,
and concluding that the style is the man. That is only true of authors who have the specific literary
genius, and have practised long enough to attain complete self-expression in letters. It is not true
even on these conditions in an age when literature is conceived as a game of style, and not as a
vehicle of self-expression by the author. Now Caesar was an amateur stylist writing books of travel
and campaign histories in a style so impersonal that the authenticity of the later volumes is disputed.
They reveal some of his qualities just as the Voyage of a Naturalist Round the World reveals some of
Darwin's, without expressing his private personality. An Englishman reading them would say that
Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality
or moral courage.
In exhibiting Caesar as a much more various person than the historian of the Gallic wars, I hope I
have not been too much imposed on by the dramatic illusion to which all great men owe part of their
reputation and some the whole of it. I admit that reputations gained in war are specially
questionable. Able civilians taking up the profession of arms, like Caesar and Cromwell, in middle
age, have snatched all its laurels from opponent commanders bred to it, apparently because capable
persons engaged in military pursuits are so scarce that the existence of two of them at the same time
in the same hemisphere is extremely rare. The capacity of any conqueror is therefore more likely
than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary. At all events, Caesar might
have won his battles without being wiser than Charles XII or Nelson or Joan of Arc, who were, like

most modern "self-made" millionaires, half-witted geniuses, enjoying the worship accorded by all
races to certain forms of insanity. But Caesar's victories were only advertisements for an eminence
that would never have become popular without them. Caesar is greater off the battle field than on it.
Nelson off his quarterdeck was so quaintly out of the question that when his head was injured at the
battle of the Nile, and his conduct became for some years openly scandalous, the difference was not
important enough to be noticed. It may, however, be said that peace hath her illusory reputations no
less than war. And it is certainly true that in civil life mere capacity for work--the power of killing a
dozen secretaries under you, so to speak, as a life-or-death courier kills horses--enables men with
common ideas and superstitions to distance all competitors in the strife of political ambition. It was
this power of work that astonished Cicero as the most prodigious of Caesar's gifts, as it astonished
later observers in Napoleon before it wore him out. How if Caesar were nothing but a Nelson and a
Gladstone combined! a prodigy of vitality without any special quality of mind! nay, with ideas that
were worn out before he was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that
possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about Caesar which seem to me to shew
that he was genuinely original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute
nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of frankness, generosity, and
magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the value of truth, money, or success in any particular
instance quite independently of convention and moral generalization. He therefore will not, in the
ordinary Treasury bench fashion, tell a lie which everybody knows to be a lie (and consequently
expects him as a matter of good taste to tell). His lies are not found out: they pass for candors. He
understands the paradox of money, and gives it away when he can get most for it: in other words,
when its value is least, which is just when a common man tries hardest to get it. He knows that the
real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. Hence, in order to produce an
impression of complete disinterestedness and magnanimity, he has only to act with entire
selfishness; and this is perhaps the only sense in which a man can be said to be2naturally 4 great. It
is in this sense that I have represented Caesar as great. Having virtue, he had no need of goodness.
He is neither forgiving, frank, nor generous, because a man who is too great to resent has nothing to
forgive; a man who says things that other people are afraid to say need be no more frank than
Bismarck was; and there is no generosity in giving things you do not want to people of whom you
intend to make use. This distinction between virtue and goodness is not understood in England:
hence the poverty of our drama in heroes. Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies.
Goodness, in its popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man is vicious by nature, and that
supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom. Not sharing that pious opinion, I have not given
countenance to it in any of my plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths, which
represent the hero as vanquishing his enemies, not in fair fight, but with enchanted sword,

superequine horse and magical invulnerability, the possession of which, from the vulgar moralistic
point of view, robs his exploits of any merit whatever.
As to Caesar's sense of humor, there is no more reason to assume that he lacked it than to assume
that he was deaf or blind. It is said that on the occasion of his assassination by a conspiracy of
moralists (it is always your moralist who makes assassination a duty, on the scaffold or off it), he
defended himself until the good Brutus struck him, when he exclaimed "What! you too, Brutus!" and
disdained further fight. If this be true, he must have been an incorrigible comedian. But even if we
waive this story, or accept the traditional sentimental interpretation of it, there is still abundant
evidence of his lightheartedness and adventurousness. Indeed it is clear from his whole history that
what has been called his ambition was an instinct for exploration. He had much more of Columbus
and Franklin in him than of Henry V.
However, nobody need deny Caesar a share, at least, of the qualities I have attributed to him. All
men, much more Julius Caesars, possess all qualities in some degree. The really interesting question
is whether I am right in assuming that the way to produce an impression of greatness is by exhibiting
a man, not as mortifying his nature by doing his duty, in the manner which our system of putting
little men into great positions (not having enough great men in our influential families to go round)
forces us to inculcate, but as simply doing what he naturally wants to do. For this raises the question
whether our world has not been wrong in its moral theory for the last 2,500 years or so. It must be a
constant puzzle to many of us that the Christian era, so excellent in its intentions, should have been
practically such a very discreditable episode in the history of the race. I doubt if this is altogether due
to the vulgar and sanguinary sensationalism of our religious legends, with their substitution of gross
physical torments and public executions for the passion of humanity. Islam, substituting
voluptuousness for torment (a merely superficial difference, it is true) has done no better. It may
have been the failure of Christianity to emancipate itself from expiatory theories of moral
responsibility, guilt, innocence, reward, punishment, and the rest of it, that baffled its intension of
changing the world. But these are bound up in all philosophies of creation as opposed to cosmism.
They may therefore be regarded as the price we pay for popular religion.