Caesar's Ghost

What It Is

Caesar's apparition to Brutus, and afterward the idea that his spirit keeps acting after the death of the body. The play shows the vision once, and the rest of Act V treats it as truth.

Where It Appears

In Act IV, Scene 3, after the reconciliation in the tent, Brutus stays awake while the servants sleep. The ghost enters, says that it is his evil spirit, and promises to meet him at Philippi. Brutus answers that he will see it there; when he wakes the servants, none of them has seen anything.

In Act V, Scene 3, before the body of Titinius, Brutus exclaims that Caesar is still powerful and that his spirit walks about, turning the swords of the Romans against their own entrails. Shortly before, Cassius, dying, had told Caesar that he was avenged with the same sword that had killed him.

In Act V, Scene 5, surrounded, Brutus tells Volumnius that Caesar's ghost appeared to him twice, once at Sardis and again the night before at Philippi, and that his hour has come. As he throws himself on the sword, he tells Caesar that he may now rest.

What It Means

The ghost does not argue with the decision to march on Philippi nor give orders: it sets an appointment. After that, Act V begins to explain the deaths through Caesar's spirit. Cassius dies by the sword that pierced Caesar, Brutus recognizes the spirit at work in the confusion of battle, and Brutus's death is treated by him as the promised hour.

The play never confirms that Caesar returns. Only Brutus sees him, and whoever hears him speak of Caesar at the end can no longer tell the ghost apart from his own decision to die. The symbol makes Brutus's death seem at once an order from outside and his own choice.

Relationships

• Standard themes: Fate and Free Will, Loyalty and Betrayal.
• Characters: Julius Caesar, Brutus, Cassius.
• Neighboring symbols: the omens, of which it is the last; the Ides of March, the date that the ghost reopens at Philippi.