Questions to Ask Julius Caesar
For a student writing a mock interview with Julius Caesar, a class reading Shakespeare's play, or anyone who would give him a seat in the dinner-guest game. The first group holds the six questions an interview with him can hardly leave out, from the Rubicon to 'Et tu, Brute', and the rest follow his life in order: the climb through debt and elections, Gaul, the civil war, the dictatorship, then the Ides of March and what came after. He wrote his own version of much of it, so a reply can often start from his words and then be tested against writers who liked him less.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Big questions
Why did you cross the Rubicon when you could have given up your command and come home as a private citizen?
Why ask it
His stated reasons were his dignitas, meaning his standing, and the rights of the tribunes who had fled to his camp. Many historians add fear of a trial for his acts as consul, though how real that danger was is still argued. Suetonius quotes an eyewitness for what he said on the field at Pharsalus: they wanted it this way, and he would have been condemned if he had not turned to his army.
Did you want to be king?
Why ask it
His recorded answer is a joke: hailed as king by a crowd, he said 'I am Caesar, not Rex', and Rex was also a Roman family name, one found in his own grandmother's line. Press him with the purple robe, the gilded chair, his portrait on coins and a month renamed for him. Then have the class decide which of those a Roman would have minded most.
Did you really say 'Et tu, Brute?' when Brutus stabbed you?
Why ask it
The Latin comes from the Elizabethan stage, and Shakespeare made it famous. Suetonius says he died without a word after one groan at the first blow, though he notes a report that Caesar said to Brutus in Greek, 'You too, child', and Plutarch has him pull his toga over his head when he saw Brutus with a blade. A student has to pick one version and say why, and silence has the best support.
Of everything you did, what are you proudest of?
Why ask it
A Roman noble would answer with his victories, and he made that point himself by holding four triumphs in a single month of 46 BC, for Gaul, Egypt, Pontus and Africa. What has lasted longest is his calendar, still in use with one correction made in 1582. Have your Caesar choose the wars and let the interviewer bring up the calendar, since he could not have known which would outlive Rome.
Did you destroy the Republic, or was it finished before you crossed the river?
Why ask it
In his favor: decades of bribery, street violence and armies loyal to their generals, and Sulla had marched on Rome a generation earlier. Against him: he was the one who chose a war over a loss of standing. Have students write his reply and then a rebuttal in the voice of Cato or Cicero.
If you had your last year over again, what would you do differently?
Why ask it
The record offers candidates: taking the dictatorship for life, sending away his bodyguard, staying seated before the Senate, and pardoning men who later carried daggers. A Caesar in character regrets a tactic and never the aim, so let him name the guard before he names the title. Whichever he picks, ask why he did not see it at the time.
Rise
Your family claimed descent from the goddess Venus, yet you grew up in the Subura, a crowded working district of Rome. Which of those two facts made you?
Why ask it
He used the Venus claim in public all his life, from the funeral speech for his aunt Julia to the temple he later built to Venus as ancestress of his line. A believable reply treats the pedigree as a tool and the Subura as the place he learned how ordinary Romans talked. It is the place to begin his early years, because the old name and the thin purse explain most of what follows.
Sulla ordered you to divorce Cornelia and you refused, at about eighteen. Why risk your life over a marriage?
Why ask it
Suetonius and Plutarch both tell it: he lost her dowry and a priesthood, hid in the hills with a fever, and was pardoned only when relatives pleaded for him. Have him answer from pride more than romance, since Cornelia was Cinna's daughter and giving her up meant changing sides. Then ask about the warning Sulla is said to have given, that there were many Mariuses in this boy.
Pirates held you for ransom and you told them they were asking too little. Is that story true?
Why ask it
Plutarch's version has them ask twenty talents and Caesar insist he was worth fifty, order them about for thirty-eight days, promise to crucify them and then come back and do it. It was written down well over a century later, so say that in a project. What rings true is the tone, a young man who would not be treated as small, so ask whether he was ever frightened on that island.
In Spain, in your early thirties, you are said to have wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great. What were you upset about?
Why ask it
Suetonius sets the scene at Gades and gives the complaint: at an age when Alexander had already conquered the world, he had done nothing worth remembering. Plutarch tells it with a book in place of the statue, which is a reminder that these stories traveled. Follow by asking who he measures himself against now that he has outdone most of them.
You borrowed huge sums to stage games and win elections. Were you ever afraid the debts would finish you?
Why ask it
As aedile he put on 320 pairs of gladiators, and on the morning of the vote for chief priest he reportedly told his mother he would come home as pontifex maximus or not at all. Crassus had to stand surety before his creditors would let him leave for Spain. The reply shows whether he saw debt as a danger or as a wager on commands he had not yet won.
When the Senate debated Catiline's conspirators, you argued against putting them to death. Was that principle or positioning?
Why ask it
Sallust gives a version of the speech: confine them for life in Italian towns, take their property, and beware the precedent of killing citizens without trial. Cato answered him and carried the vote for execution, the best known early clash between the two. Pair this with the later questions on mercy and see whether his answers match.
You divorced Pompeia with the remark that Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. Did you hold yourself to that standard?
Why ask it
The occasion was the scandal of 62 BC, when Clodius was accused of slipping into a women-only religious rite at Caesar's house. Caesar offered no evidence against him at the trial and kept him as a political ally, so the famous line cost him nothing. Expect a charming dodge, which is in character, and let the interviewer point out that his own reputation in Rome was far from spotless.
Passing a poor village in the Alps, you said you would rather be first man there than second in Rome. Is that still how you see it?
Why ask it
Plutarch places the remark on his way to govern Spain in 61 BC, as a reply to friends joking about small-town politics. It works as the thesis sentence of an essay on his career. Ask it early and then again after the Rubicon questions, and have him count what being first ended up costing.
You, Pompey and Crassus divided Roman politics among yourselves. Who needed whom most?
Why ask it
The deal of 60 BC was a private arrangement with no office attached, and 'First Triumvirate' is a modern label he would not recognize. He was the junior partner: Pompey had veterans to settle, Crassus had tax contractors to rescue, and Caesar had a consulship to win. A good reply admits that he started as the one who owed the favors.
As consul you forced your land law through while your colleague Bibulus stayed home announcing bad omens. Was your year in office legal?
Why ask it
This is the question his enemies wanted to put to him in a courtroom. Bibulus's sky-watching gave them grounds to call the laws of 59 BC invalid, and the city joked about the consulship of Julius and Caesar. Keep his answer in mind for later, because it bears on why coming home without an army looked so dangerous ten years on.
Gaul
You went to Gaul as a governor and left as its conqueror. Did you set out to take the whole country?
Why ask it
His own commentaries present each campaign as the answer to a threat or a plea for help, beginning with the Helvetian migration of 58 BC. Most historians see a man with debts to clear and a reputation to make who took every opening. The best invented reply keeps the official line and lets the motive show through it.
Why did you write about your own wars in the third person, as 'Caesar' and never 'I'?
Why ask it
The books were written for readers in Rome while he was away from it, and the third person makes a general's case for himself read like a plain record. Ask who he pictured reading them. If the project quotes the eighth book of the Gallic War, note that his officer Aulus Hirtius wrote it.
You built a bridge across the Rhine in ten days, marched over, and pulled it down eighteen days later. What was the point?
Why ask it
By his account, crossing in boats was beneath the dignity of the Roman people, and the aim was to show the Germans that Rome could reach them whenever it liked. It is a good test of whether he separates strategy from display, or sees any difference. Book four describes the timber work closely enough for a student to build a model from it.
You crossed to Britain twice and kept none of it. Why go at all?
Why ask it
He went in 55 and 54 BC, lost ships to storms both years and left with hostages and promises of tribute but no garrison. His stated reason was that Britons had been helping the Gauls, and the Senate voted twenty days of thanksgiving, though Cicero grumbled in a letter that the island had no silver. Expect an answer about the fame of sailing past the edge of the known world.
Ancient writers say a million people died in your Gallic wars and a million more were enslaved. How do you answer for that?
Why ask it
The figures are Plutarch's and cannot be checked, and modern historians treat them as rough at best, but the scale of killing and enslavement is not in doubt. Caesar reports the destruction of whole peoples in his own book without apology, so a truthful reply will not sound sorry. A class should not skip this one, and should not write him a modern conscience either.
Cato proposed handing you over to the Germans after you attacked the Usipetes and Tencteri during a truce. What do you say to him?
Why ask it
Plutarch records the proposal, made in the Senate in 55 BC. Caesar's version is that the Germans broke the truce first by attacking his cavalry, and that he detained their leaders when they came to explain and then fell on their camp. Use it to practice setting an accused man's account beside his critic's, since here both survive.
Vercingetorix beat you at Gergovia. What did you get wrong there?
Why ask it
He admits the repulse of 52 BC and puts it on soldiers who pressed on past the recall, giving his losses as nearly seven hundred men and forty-six centurions. Ask whether blaming the troops is fair. It is one of the few places in his own writing where you can question him about a failure.
At Alesia you built one ring of works facing the town and a second facing outward. When did you think you might lose?
Why ask it
The besieger became the besieged once the Gallic relief army arrived. He describes riding into the fighting in his commander's cloak so the men would know him by its color, at a gap on the northern hill where the lines could not be closed, and a believable answer names that last afternoon. This is also the question to pick if the project needs a map.
Vercingetorix surrendered to you in person. Why keep him in a cell for six years and then have him killed?
Why ask it
He was held for the triumph of 46 BC and executed afterward, which was the custom for an enemy commander led in the procession. Set that beside the pardons he handed to Roman opponents in the civil war. The follow-up is why his mercy stopped at the edge of the citizen body.
Your soldiers followed you for the better part of a decade. What did you do that other generals did not?
Why ask it
Suetonius has the details: he called them comrades, marched at the front bareheaded in sun and rain, doubled their pay and overlooked a good deal off duty while punishing desertion hard. When the Tenth Legion later mutinied he is said to have broken them with one word, addressing them as citizens. Ask him how much of the loyalty was affection and how much was plunder.
Civil war
What did you actually say at the Rubicon?
Why ask it
Nobody knows for certain. Suetonius gives the Latin usually translated as the die is cast, Plutarch says he spoke Greek and quoted the playwright Menander, something closer to let the die be thrown, and Caesar's own book on the civil war never mentions the river. That leaves room for an invented reply, as long as the project says which source it leans on.
You marched into Italy with a single legion. Was that confidence or a gamble?
Why ask it
Only the Thirteenth was with him, and most of his army was still beyond the Alps. Speed was his habit in Gaul too, and it worked: towns opened their gates and Pompey left Rome within days. Ask what the plan was if the towns of Italy had shut him out, because nothing he wrote says he had one.
Pompey had been your ally and your son-in-law. When did the two of you stop trusting each other?
Why ask it
Two deaths are usually named: his daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, died in childbirth in 54 BC, and Crassus was killed at Carrhae the year after, which left two men where there had been three. Caesar proposed a fresh marriage tie and Pompey turned it down. A strong reply picks a moment and does not put all the blame on Pompey.
Titus Labienus was your best officer in Gaul, and he went over to Pompey. Why did he leave you?
Why ask it
The sources give no reason, which makes this a good essay question. The usual guesses are an old tie to Pompey, whose family were the great patrons of Labienus's home region, a belief in the Senate's cause, or resentment at how little credit he got. Plutarch adds that Caesar sent his baggage and money after him, and whatever your Caesar says should be labeled a guess.
At Corfinium you let your captured enemies walk free. Was mercy a virtue or a weapon?
Why ask it
A letter of his survives among Cicero's, saying he wants a new way of conquering, through mercy and generosity, and that he will not copy Sulla, so he can answer in something close to his own words. The sting is that released men such as Domitius went straight back to fighting him. Pardoning a fellow noble is also a way of ranking yourself above him, which is why Cato would not take it.
In a storm on the Adriatic you are said to have told a frightened boatman that he carried Caesar and Caesar's luck. How much of your career was luck?
Why ask it
Plutarch tells it: disguised and in a small boat, he was trying to slip back to Italy to hurry the rest of his army across, and the sea beat the boat back anyway. Romans treated a general's good fortune as a quality he possessed, so he would take the word as praise. Ask him to name one win he owes to chance and one he does not.
After Dyrrhachium you reportedly said Pompey would have won the war that day if he had known how to. How close were you to losing everything?
Why ask it
Plutarch and Suetonius both carry a version of the remark, made after his lines were broken and he had to retreat into Thessaly short of food, weeks before Pharsalus. It is a useful correction for a class that thinks he never lost. Have him say what he would have done in Pompey's place that evening.
What did you feel when the Egyptians showed you Pompey's head?
Why ask it
Plutarch says he turned away from the man who brought it and wept when he was handed the signet ring. Cassius Dio, writing much later, calls the tears an act, since the murder had removed his rival without staining his hands. A reply with both relief and grief in it is easier to believe than one with only tears.
You stayed in Egypt for months with the war unfinished. Was that for Cleopatra or for Egypt's money?
Why ask it
Some of the stay was not a choice: he was besieged in the palace quarter of Alexandria through the winter of 48 to 47 BC, and he had come to collect a debt owed by her late father. The tale of her being carried in to meet him is Plutarch's, and the wrapping was a bedding sack, not a carpet. For a school project stay with what is recorded: he backed her claim to the throne, and whether her son Caesarion was his was disputed at the time.
'I came, I saw, I conquered.' Were you boasting, or making a point about someone else?
Why ask it
The three words refer to Zela in 47 BC, where he beat Pharnaces of Pontus within five days of arriving. Suetonius says they were carried on a placard in his triumph, and Plutarch puts them in a letter to a friend. He is also reported to have said Pompey was lucky to have made his name against enemies like that, so the brevity may be a jab.
Which of your enemies did you respect most?
Why ask it
The likely candidates are Pompey and Cato. When Cato died at Utica sooner than be pardoned, Caesar is said to have remarked that he begrudged Cato that death, as Cato had begrudged him the chance to spare his life, and he then wrote a pamphlet attacking the dead man. It plays well at a dinner table because everyone expects him to name Pompey.
Dictator
You were named dictator for life. What did you mean to do with Rome that needed that long?
Why ask it
The title came early in 44 BC, and the old emergency office it was named after ran for six months at most. No surviving text sets out his plan for how Rome should be governed, which is the largest gap in the record, so a reply has to lean on what he did do: grants of citizenship, a bigger Senate, a new forum, a new calendar. Then ask why none of that could be done by an ordinary consul.
You made your name as the people's champion. Once you held all the power, what did ordinary Romans get out of it?
Why ask it
Suetonius lists both sides: cash, grain and oil handed out at his triumphs, a year's rent forgiven for tenants in modest lodgings, and eighty thousand citizens sent out to new colonies overseas. He also cut the list of people drawing free grain from 320,000 to 150,000. Ask whether the people were his cause or his way up, and expect him to say there was no difference.
You are quoted as saying Sulla was a fool to give up the dictatorship. Did you mean it?
Why ask it
Suetonius takes the remark from a hostile writer, Titus Ampius: a pun that Sulla did not know his ABCs when he laid the office down, alongside the claim that the republic was a name with no body. Treat it as an enemy's report. It is still the strongest evidence for readers who think he never intended to step aside.
At the Lupercalia, Mark Antony held out a crown to you in front of the crowd and you pushed it away. Was that staged?
Why ask it
It happened on 15 February 44 BC, a month before he died, and ancient writers already disagreed: a test of the crowd, Antony's own idea, or a public refusal meant to kill a rumor. He had the refusal entered in the official calendar. Shakespeare puts it in his first act, in Casca's sour report of three offers, so a class reading the play can set that scene against the sources.
You stayed in your seat when the whole Senate came to present you with honors. Why not just stand up?
Why ask it
It took place in front of the temple of Venus he had built, and Suetonius counts it as the act that did him the most harm. The excuses vary: he was unwell, or a friend held him down by the arm. Use it to talk about how much weight a small gesture can carry, and ask him whether he would take it back.
Why did you fix the calendar, and whose idea was it?
Why ask it
The Roman year had slipped about three months out of step with the seasons, partly because the priests in charge, of whom he was the chief, had skipped the adjustments. With advice from the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes he let 46 BC run to 445 days and began a year of 365 days with a leap day. Ask him who complained: Plutarch has Cicero, told that the constellation Lyra would rise the next morning, answer that yes, it would rise by decree.
You filled the Senate with your officers, men from the Italian towns and even Gauls. What was wrong with the old one?
Why ask it
He raised the membership to around nine hundred, and Suetonius preserves the jokes that went round: Gauls trading their trousers for the senator's stripe, and a notice asking that nobody show a new senator the way to the Senate house. His answer tells you whether he thought of Rome as a city or as an empire. Follow by asking whether these men were there to advise him or to agree with him.
You combed your hair forward and prized the right to wear a laurel wreath at all times. How much did being laughed at bother you?
Why ask it
Suetonius says baldness troubled him a great deal and that of all the honors voted him the wreath was the one he used most gladly. His own soldiers teased him about it in the songs they sang at his triumphs, and he let them. It is a light question for the dinner game, and it shows a man who was vain and still able to take a joke from the right people.
Cicero had you to dinner in December of 45 BC and wrote afterward that you were not a guest one asks back. What did the two of you talk about?
Why ask it
The letter to Atticus survives: Caesar arrived with some two thousand soldiers in tow, walked on the shore, bathed and ate well, and the talk was all literature with nothing serious about politics. It is a real account of having him to dinner, which makes it the model for the dinner-guest game. Let him give his own view of Cicero in return.
You were about to leave for a war against Parthia. Was that to avenge Crassus, or to get out of Rome?
Why ask it
His departure was fixed for a few days after the Ides, which is why the conspirators had a deadline. The plans in the sources are enormous and may have grown in the telling. Listen for whether he sounds happier in a camp than in the Senate, then ask what he expected to come back as.
Ides and after
A soothsayer warned you about the Ides, your wife dreamed of your death, and you went to the Senate anyway. Why?
Why ask it
Spurinna's warning and Calpurnia's dream are both in the ancient accounts, as is the exchange on the way in, 'the Ides have come' and 'yes, but not gone'. He wavered that morning until Decimus Brutus, a trusted officer who was in the plot, told him the Senate would feel mocked if he stayed home; the play calls him Decius. Decide whether your Caesar goes out of pride or out of fatalism.
You had dismissed your Spanish bodyguard. Did you trust the senators' oath to protect you, or had you stopped caring?
Why ask it
Suetonius reports the dismissal, and adds that some of his friends thought he no longer wanted to live long in failing health. He also quotes Caesar saying his survival mattered more to Rome than to himself, because his death would bring a worse civil war, and that forecast came true. The question lets a student choose between a tired man and an overconfident one and argue for the choice.
The night before, at dinner, the talk turned to the best way to die. What did you answer?
Why ask it
Plutarch, Suetonius and Appian agree: a sudden one, said at the table of Lepidus. It is almost too neat, so note that the story may have been polished after the event. At a dinner party of your own this is a quietly chilling thing to ask him, and it is better saved for late in the evening.
What was Brutus to you: a protege, a friend, or something closer?
Why ask it
Brutus's mother Servilia was close to Caesar for many years, and gossip made Brutus his son, which the dates make very unlikely, since Caesar was about fifteen when Brutus was born. What is recorded is that he ordered Brutus spared at Pharsalus and then promoted him. Cicero passes on his verdict: whatever that young man wants, he wants badly.
Most of the men who stabbed you owed you a pardon or a promotion. Was sparing them your mistake?
Why ask it
Brutus and Cassius had both fought for Pompey and both held praetorships by his favor in 44 BC, and Decimus Brutus was named in his will. So the mercy of the civil war years leads straight to the Senate floor. Compare what his heirs did next: they drew up death lists.
You were killed in a hall Pompey built, at the foot of his statue. Did that feel like chance?
Why ask it
The Senate met that day in a hall attached to Pompey's theater because the regular Senate house was being rebuilt. Plutarch lingers on the statue and says it looked as if Pompey were presiding over his own revenge. It also corrects a common slip in school projects: the killing was not on the Capitol, where Shakespeare sets it, and not in the Forum.
A note naming the conspirators was put in your hand on the way in. Why didn't you read it?
Why ask it
Plutarch names the man who passed it over as Artemidorus, a teacher of Greek, and says the crush of petitioners kept Caesar from reading it though he tried more than once, so he went in still holding it. Shakespeare turns that into a choice, giving him the line that what touches himself will be served last. Too crowded or too grand: the two versions make a tidy paragraph of comparison.
If you could say one thing to the men who killed you, what would it be?
Why ask it
This is the open question for a creative interview, and the record supplies the ammunition. Suetonius says hardly any of the assassins outlived him by more than three years, the republic they killed for did not come back, and the boy he adopted ended as Rome's first emperor. A reply that uses those facts will land harder than one that only sounds angry.
Your will gave three quarters of your estate and your name to an eighteen-year-old great-nephew. What did you see in Octavius?
Why ask it
The will was opened after his death, and the adoption seems to have surprised nearly everyone. Octavius had been ill, had followed him to Spain late in the campaign of 45 BC and was due to go east on the Parthian war. No source says whether Caesar expected the boy to rule or simply to inherit, so mark this answer as invention wherever you use it.
Shakespeare named the play after you, gave Brutus the most lines and killed you off in the third act. Is that fair?
Why ask it
The stage Caesar speaks of himself by name, which echoes his own books, is deaf in one ear, which is in no ancient source, and has the falling sickness, which the ancient writers do mention. Have him object to something specific, such as Cassius's story of hauling him out of the Tiber, which no ancient writer tells. Then ask the class whose tragedy it is.
The play has you say that cowards die many times before their deaths. Would you have said that?
Why ask it
The line is Shakespeare's, but it has a root. Plutarch records that when friends pressed him to keep a bodyguard he said it was better to die once than to be always expecting death. Tracing the stage line back to that sentence is a short research exercise, since Shakespeare worked from Thomas North's English translation of Plutarch.
What do you make of your name becoming a title, a month and a way of being born?
Why ask it
Kaiser and tsar both come from Caesar, and the month of July was renamed for him in 44 BC. The birth story is the myth to correct: his mother Aurelia lived for decades after he was born, which is why historians doubt he arrived by surgery, and where the word comes from is disputed. For the dinner game, add that the salad is named after a restaurateur of the 1920s.
What do you think of the emperors who ruled under your name?
Why ask it
It is pure speculation and a project should say so. The anchor is Augustus, who seems to have studied the Ides closely: he kept the republican offices running, refused the title of dictator and called himself first citizen. A sharp reply has Caesar either admire the disguise or despise it, and it makes a strong last question for a mock interview.
Writing Caesar's side of the interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Who is speaking in each source
His own war books
The Gallic War and the Civil War are Caesar arguing his case to Romans who could vote, and they are the nearest thing to hearing him. Use them for what he wanted believed, and notice what he leaves out: the Civil War never names the Rubicon. A reply built on these books should sound like a man who has already decided he was right.
Suetonius and Plutarch came later
Nearly every famous anecdote, from the pirates to the last words, comes from these two biographers, who wrote more than a century after the Ides from older books now lost. They often disagree on details, and where they do, say so in a footnote and pick one. Suetonius likes gossip and exact quotations. Plutarch likes a moral.
Cicero knew him
Cicero's letters are the only running commentary from someone who dined with Caesar, feared him and wrote the same week. They preserve a letter of Caesar's on mercy and the account of the dinner of December 45 BC. When a letter and a later biographer conflict, the letter usually wins.
Shakespeare is a play
The play follows Plutarch closely in places and invents freely in others, squeezing weeks into days and giving characters lines no Roman recorded. Quote it as Shakespeare and never as Caesar. For a class reading it, the gap between the stage and the sources is the assignment.
A Roman voice, not a modern one
Short sentences, plain words
Cicero, no friend of his politics, praised the war books as bare and graceful, with every ornament stripped away. Write his replies the same way: a fact, a reason, a full stop. If an answer runs past four sentences, cut it, because the real man reported a whole campaign in three words.
Let him say 'Caesar' once or twice
He wrote of himself in the third person, and Shakespeare borrowed the habit. A reply such as 'Caesar did not begin that war' gives the flavor at once. Do it twice in an interview and it sounds like him; do it in every line and it sounds like a parody.
Give him Roman reasons
The words that move him are standing, glory, ancestors and what is owed to friends and soldiers. He does not think conquest needs an excuse, and he would be puzzled by a question about human rights. When the interviewer raises Gaul, let him answer as a Roman and let the interviewer disagree out loud.
Where he would change the subject
On the legality of his consulship, on kingship and on what he planned after Parthia, the record shows a man who joked, deflected or stayed silent. Write the dodge and have the interviewer notice it. A Caesar who confesses everything is less accurate than one who smiles and talks about the calendar.
Four ways to run it
A ten-minute mock interview
Take one question from each group and a second from Big questions, which gives seven and leaves time for follow-ups. The interviewer keeps the notes and the student playing Caesar does not see them. Add a third student as Cato or Cicero, allowed one rebuttal at the end, and the class hears both the defense and the charge.
A written assignment
Choose six to eight questions that run from Rise to Ides and after so the piece has a shape. After each reply add a bracket naming the source it rests on, or the single word 'invented' where the record is silent, as it is on Labienus, the unread note and Octavius. The brackets show a reader which parts are evidence and which parts are yours.
Alongside the play
The Ides and after group fits best once the class has finished Act 3. Read the scene, ask the question, then check the note for what the ancient writers say happened. Shakespeare's largest changes are to place and timing, while his Brutus stays close to Plutarch's.
The dinner-guest game
Each person gets one question and has to say why they chose it. The ones that work at a table are those with no recorded answer or a disputed one: the words at the river, the tears over Pompey, the best way to die. Someone answers as Caesar, and the rest vote on whether they believe him.
Errors that turn up in Caesar projects
Calling him emperor
He was consul, proconsul and dictator, and never emperor. That line starts with his adopted heir, later called Augustus. Have your interviewer use 'dictator' and the reader will trust everything else on the page a little more.
Dates that count the wrong way
Years BC run downward, so he was born in 100, crossed the Rubicon in 49 and died in 44, at fifty-five. Check every age in the interview against that. The Gallic command ran from 58 to 50 BC, and barely five years of civil war and rule came after it, a shorter stretch than most students expect.
Lines he never spoke
'Et tu, Brute' and 'cowards die many times' come from the English stage and from no Roman writer. 'The die is cast' and 'I came, I saw, I conquered' are ancient but reported at second hand, in more than one form. If your Caesar uses one, have the interviewer ask him whether he really said it.
All tyrant or all genius
Romans who lived through it could not agree, and the men who killed him had accepted his pardons and his offices. An interview that makes him a monster or a hero has skipped half the evidence. Keep one question in the script that he answers badly and one where the interviewer is forced to concede a point.