Brutus

Servilia, the mother of Brutus, traced her lineage back to Servilius Ahala, who, when Spurius Maelius was seditiously plotting to usurp absolute power, took a dagger under his arm, went into the forum, drew nigh the man, as if intending to confer privately with him, and when he inclined his head to listen, stabbed him to death.[*](In 439 B.C. Cf. Livy, iv. 13 f. )

This, at all events, is generally admitted; but as to the lineage of Brutus by his father’s side, those who display great hatred and malevolence towards him because of the murder of Caesar deny that it goes back to that Brutus who expelled the Tarquins, since no offspring was left to him when he had slain his sons. The ancestor of Brutus, they say, was a plebeian, son of a steward by the name of Brutus, and had only recently risen to office.

Poseidonius the philosopher, however, says that the two sons of Brutus who were of age perished according to the story, but that a third son was left, an infant, from whom the family descended.

He says, moreover, that there were certainly illustrious men of this house in his own day, some of whom called attention to their likeness in form and features to the statue of Brutus. Thus much, then, on this head.

Servilia, the mother of Brutus, was a sister of Cato the philosopher, and Brutus had a higher esteem for him than for any other Roman, Cato being his uncle and afterwards becoming his father-in-law.

There was practically no Greek philosopher with whom Brutus was unacquainted or unfamiliar, but he devoted himself particularly to the disciples of Plato.

To the New and Middle Academy, as they are called, he was not very partial, but clung to the Old. He was therefore always an admirer of Antiochus of Ascalon, whose brother Aristus he had made his friend and housemate, a man who in learning was inferior to many philosophers, but who in good sense and gentleness vied with the foremost.

Empylus also, who is often mentioned by Brutus himself in his letters, and also by his friends, as a housemate of his, was a rhetorician, and has left a brief but excellent account of the assassination of Caesar, entitled Brutus.