Julius Caesar

Basic terms to know and characters

Drama

A narrative that is meant to be performed by actors in front of an audience. The plot and characters are developed through dialogue and action.

Act

A larger division of a dramatic text that indicates a shift in location or the passage of time.

Scene

A smaller division of a dramatic text that indicates a shift in location or the passage of time.

Dramatic Irony

The audience is aware of something that the characters onstage are not aware of; works to build suspense in a text or drama.

Pun

A play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.

Dialogue

A conversation between two or more people. Any portion of a stages drama, that is neither a monologue nor a soliloquy, is a dialogue.

Monologue

A long speech by one person to an audience of any number of people.

Soliloquy

A long speech in which a character who is onstage alone expresses his or her thoughts and feelings aloud.

Aside

Words spoken by a character in a play to the audience or to another character that are not supposed to be heard by the others onstage.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction. This is often used when emotions become most intense.

Hamartia

An act of injustice, an error, or a frailty that brings about the misfortune of the tragic hero.

Tragic Flaw

Character trait that leads directly to the protagonist’s fall/catastrophe.

Catharsis

The purging of the emotions of pity and fear that the audience experiences, but the hero does not.

Peripeteia (reversal)

The point when the hero’s fortunes turn in an unexpected direction; the move from happiness to misery.

Omens

• blood

• nature

• storms

• animals - lions, birds

• stars/shooting stars

Great Chain of Being

What things happen that are “against the natural order”?

Motif

A distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition.

Tragic hero

An articulate, social authority, someone who is “important” within his society (NOTE: “his” is deliberate); this hero has at least one weakness or fault - a tragic flaw - which during the course of the drama grows until it overcomes his virtues and leads to his downfall and the destruction of his world.

Artemidorus

Tries to warn Caesar of the assassination plot.

Brutus

Kills Caesar, stabs last.

Calpurnia

Caesar’s wife.

Casca

Patrician who conspired against Caesar with Brutus.

Cassius

A roman senator and a main conspirator agains Caesar. Resented Caesar’s power and manipulated Brutus into joining the assassination plot. Committed Suicide.

Cinna

A conspirator in the assassination plot.

Cinna the Poet

Got killed by a mob when they went out to kill Cinna the Conspirator because he had the same name.

Decius Brutus

Conspirator against Julius Caesar. Manipulated Caesar into going to the Senate on his assassination day.

Julius Caesar

Powerful Roman general and dictator whose ambition and perceived tyranny led to his assassination by a group of conspirators.

Mark Antony

Loyal Roman general and Caesar’s close friend and ally, and later becomes an antagonist after his funeral speech. Led the Roman public to turn against Brutus and the conspirators.

Portia

Brutus’s wife. Killed herself by “swallowing fire” (hot coal).

Publius

A senator who is an accomplice in the assassination and uses his banished brother’s petition as a distraction to get close to Caesar.

Soothsayer

Famously warns Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March” and attempts to tell Caesar about the assassination plot many times. Is a symbol of fate and foreshadows Caesars doom.

Trebonius

A Roman politician and conspirator against Caesar who distracted Mark Antony to make sure he didn’t interfere with the assassination.

Tribune

Officials supposed to protect the common people (Plebes). They were Flavius and Marullus.

Logos

An appeal to an audience’s sense of logic and reasoning using facts, statistics, and evidence.

Ethos

The author’s credibility, character, and authority, persuading the reader by establishing trust.

Pathos

An appeal to emotion that persuades an audience by evoking feelings like pity, sorrow, or passion.