Question

#22

Read the excerpt from Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2.

ANTONY. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend1445
me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.1450
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honourable man,
So are they all, all honourable men—1455
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me.
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,1460
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,1465
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?

Which conclusion does this excerpt best support?

Antony agrees with Brutus that Caesar was too persistent.
Antony wants to make the people angry by defending Caesar.
Antony believes that Brutus and the others are as virtuous as Caesar.
Antony wishes that Caesar would have been more determined.

Answer 1

Antony wants to make the people angry by defending Caesar.

Step-by-step explanation:

correct on edge

Answer 2

The correct answer is “Antony wants to make the people angry by defending Caesar.”

Indeed, although he uses irony over repetition of the term “honorable” to describe Brutus and his accomplices, both the context and the excessive repetition indicate that the opposite effect is intended. Also, he cleverly uses an axiom (self-evident truth that requires no proof) when he says that people remember the evil deeds of a person after his death and that whatever good they did fades from memory.

However, again, he is seeking for the opposite emotional response as he knows that the plebs only remember good things about Caesar, which inevitably means that they will do the exact opposite of what the axiom states: they will remember his good deeds towards them and hate those who murdered him. Then he provides factual evidence of Caesar’s good deeds such as the “filling up of the general coffers” and his rejection of the crown when it was offered to him. He aims to provoke an uprising by using rhetoric to get the people to act instead of a frontal attack on Brutus and his accomplices who are still too powerful.