Was Brutus Framed? The Caesar Case
Gold, Reopened Vic
Vic Gold Was Brutus Framed? The Caesar Case Reopened Nine anni have passed, give or take an equinox, since National Review, in a treatise entitled "Rush to Philippi," first raised critical...
...May the gods rest his soul...
...When he had something on his mind, he just came out with it...
...A: That's the one...
...Q: Lepidus...
...He did his uncle in...
...Enough to stand the Roman power structure on its patrician ear...
...I haven't finished with the unexplained elimination of key personae...
...Q: With due respect, Signora, the Commission's findings...
...Immediately before the assassination he was lurking, vi et armis, behind Pompey's statue...
...Although, as self-advertised, Calpurnia was not one to stand "on ceremonies," she nevertheless insisted that her attorney-agent, Marcus Lanius, be at her side during the course of the Q-and-A session...
...Lanius here prefers that one, but help us settle another argument...
...A: Mistaken, my sandaled foot...
...Or double-agents...
...That interview sequitur...
...Comparare: there were "three-and-thirty" according to Knight's Pictorial Edition of the Shakespeare Report...
...rather, with an observer who, in the phrase of the slain Dictator himself, is to be considered above suspicion...
...And how about that far-fetched coincidence of the two Cinnas...
...Now, here Antony—a good boy, Antony, he was like a son to my husband—Antony asks Octavius' messenger, he says: "Is thy mastercoming ?" That's the way we talked in those days, understand...
...Calpurnia: I'll say he knew something...
...A: You got it...
...Because you're the first to ask...
...A: When did he ever pay attention to anybody's warning about anything...
...Like a daughter to my husband...
...He says that his master—and this is straight from the Commission Report—"lies within seven leagues of Rome...
...A: Based on what...
...I count as many holes in the Shakespeare findings as there were in my poor husband—may the gods, et cetera...
...A: No, gumba, Octavius Shapiro...
...A: Marcus, I think we should have gotten in touch with Mike Wallace...
...All done in...
...Q: Exempli gratia...
...Did anyone ever pay any attention to Calpurnia...
...My client, you see, gets carried away...
...Antony dies, according to the Commission, "Falling on his sword...
...A: Better than that...
...It was before the New Revised Version...
...You've read the Commission Report...
...I would say, "Julius, be careful...
...I just stick to my plain, uncomplicated sinister plot: One man, one dagger...
...Q: Antony and Cleopatra...
...Q: So...
...Q: You mean, Caesar ignored your warning about leaving home...
...Could you be specific...
...three-andtwenty" in the variorum reading...
...And how about the third member of the Triumvirate...
...Q: If you don't mind my saying, that interpretation strains credulity...
...Or trajectory...
...Ab initio, for all your talk about unexplained dispatchings, the matter of your own uncomplicated departure as a dramatis persona...
...Who would believe me...
...The real Commission cover-up...
...A: So...
...and ``two—and—thirty," if you accept the Beaumont and Fletcher version...
...A: First, he wasn't at the murder scene himself...
...Act III, Scene ii, of the Supplementary, he's dispatched—get this—"troubled...with the green sickness...
...His own nephew, mind you...
...Why, I ask you...
...He would shrug his toga and go about his business...
...My husband, believe me, treated that boy like he was his own son...
...Look it up, Act V, Scene iii: "Caesar, now be stilled, I killed not thee...
...Q: What kinds of holes in the Report, Signora...
...By the Commission's own finding, he went to his grave denying he killed my husband...
...After lengthy study and considerable borrowing from the theories of Plutarch and Suetonius, it was determined that G. J. Caesar/ Caucasian male/ Height approx...
...Q: The colloquy between Mark Antony and Octavius' runner...
...What happened in the tavern of Dame Eleanor Bull, 30 May 1593, when Christopher Marlowe allegedly was stabbed...
...The ingrate...
...He was like a son to my...
...We have Antony's word that Brutus was an honorable man...
...But take the Report at face value: Tell me, how does a man travel seven leagues in one short scene...
...Q: You mean, he knew something...
...Q: Marlowe...
...The Caesar Case Reopened Nine anni have passed, give or take an equinox, since National Review, in a treatise entitled "Rush to Philippi," first raised critical questions regarding the official Shakespeare Commission Report on the Assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar...
...Antony...
...Q: His nephew...
...To be sure, there will be those readers skeptical even of historical skepticism...
...5 ft...
...And she died—"by strange manner" yet...
...Of all the Carthaginian elephant cr - - Lanius: Strike that last remark...
...Q: That's rather odd, I'll admit...
...Q: Again, all respect, but the usualinterpretation given that description is that Antony was being, shall I say, ironic...
...The following interview with Calpurnia, spiritually located Somewhere on the French Riviera (or, as she sees it, the lower third of divided Gaul), is die result of Gold's latest venture into the inquisitorial beyond...
...Omens, yes...
...What was he afraid of...
...Q: But the Shakespeare Commission Report...
...Why should the Commission accept such a ridiculous alibi...
...Guilt-by-prophecy...
...et Quis survivat...
...Octavius Caesar...
...But how else...
...Would Mike Wallace ask a stupid question like that...
...Listen, I knew that boy since he was in a swaddling tunic...
...What's that supposed to mean...
...Believe me, I would have known if he'd shown up at my place...
...More recently, however, growing public interest and the prospect of expanded newsstand circulation has led other publications—notably, New Times, Ramparts, National Enquirer—to raise fresh questions regarding inconsistencies in the official studies of a number of other political assassinations...
...Let them wonder...
...A: So this: one scene later—one short scene—where do we find Octavius...
...Q: Such as...
...Q: Signora Caesar, there will be those who will wonder why you're only now getting around to criticizing the Shakespeare Report...
...A: I'm not into grassy knoll or "magic sword" theories...
...There are gaps in your case...
...Certainly not my husband...
...Q: Well, Signora, all roads leading to Rome, it might have been possible...
...I should care what other people think...
...A: Brutus himself what...
...Then framed Brutus and the rest...
...Q: Yes, but isn't the last part of that line, "with half so good a will "? A: You call that evidence...
...A: Not Shakespeare at all...
...But in candor, I'm not convinced that the world could be duped for three centuries by a spurious Report...
...What about that poor girl Portia...
...A: A togawash of the whole affair...
...Q: The Report, however...
...And Antony wouldn't have said that if he didn't mean it...
...But not auguries...
...wasn't even a vintage year for auThe Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1976 19 guries...
...Q: And you interpret that...
...I never knew a boy with better balance...
...The answers to those unanswered questions the Shake-speare Commission wasn't interested in pursuing...
...Rush to Stratford or Who Wrote Shakespeare...
...The Report admits that...
...20 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1976...
...Yet we would caution that such readers temper their skepticism...
...sination case, with an eye toward cashing in on a hot market...
...He could do it in a Karmann Ghia chariot, maybe, with Ben Hur driving...
...Tempus, as the old saw goes, fugit...
...A: Oh, it does...
...A: You want examples...
...What testimony did the Commission have that the so-called conspirators were anywhere near the Capitol at the time...
...What kind of investigative reporter are you...
...We are not dealing here, after all, with any run-of-the-conspiracy-market literary hustler...
...It just goes to show...
...Signor Know-It-All...
...A: Antony ironic...
...Fine...
...You don't live with G. J. Caesar without learning a few tricks...
...Beware of Brutus, take heed of Cassius"—all that pastafageole...
...A grassy knoll...
...A: Well, videlicet, for openers: by my own personal count, not including that of my lawyer here, there are no fewer than 57 major and 432 minor discrepancies, anomalies, inconsistencies, contradictions, and weird auguries in the official Shakespeare version...
...Am I to understand that you claim the Shakespeare Commission was actually...
...Not to be outdistanced in the field of historical skepticism, The Alternative, in keeping with its tradition of errant pedantry, assigned crack Occult Inquisitor Vic Gold to dig up the spirit of someone familiar with the Caesar assasVic Gold's last posthumous interview was with the ghost of Calvin Coolidge...
...Now you tell me...
...But I had special insurance...
...The Commission's conclusions are, of course, well-known to every secondary school senior in the Western World...
...A nice boy...
...Q: I concede, Signora, you raise some provocative points...
...Where never Roman shall take note" of him...
...A: Such as the actual number of wounds inflicted on my husband...
...You remember Act III, Scene ii...
...In the Report, Act III, Scene iii, it puts him "at Caesar's home...
...But even if we grant everything you say, what's the point...
...Q: Much ado about nothing...
...A: Oh, not just witnesses...
...You know the type...
...4 in./ Weight 145/ Age 56/ Eyes, jet/ Hair, balding with garland/ Distinguishing characteristics, prominent Roman nose/ Occupation, Dictator, was indeed killed on the fifteenth day of March, 44 B.C., "his mantle muffling up his face," before the orchestrated bladework of a liberal senatorial cabal composed of Casca, Cassius, Cinna, Decius, Ligarius, Metellus Cimber, Trebonius, and (surprisingly) Brutus...
...Start with the big one...
...Q: But Brutus, himself...
...I knew who was writing the Report...
...Just a few days ago I was telling Lady Macbeth and her literary agent—you remember her, she's the one whose husband was framed at Dunsinane...
...Her point is that the killing of Cinna the poet —Act III, Scene iii—was more than met the Roman eagle's eye...
...Lanius: The Signora's point is: Octavius wasn't en route, but actually in the Capitol all the time...
...Do you swallow that one, too...
...So after he's dead and buried I'm going to run around yelling his nephew did him in...
...Not even Gibbon bothered to look me up...
...A: A lot you know...
...Second, we have his word that Brutus was an honorable man...
...Somewhat gone to chubbiness in the manner of Mediterranean beauties past their prime, Caesar's wife, according to Gold, was one of his most talkative occult interview subjects...
...I ask you two questions, in plain Latin: Cui bono...
...And take my word for it, 44 B.C...
...A: Wait...
...Either that, or he was bribed...
...Act IV, Scene xiii...
...Poor Brutus...
...And Antony wouldn't have said that if he didn't mean it...
...Calpurnia: And did the job single-handed...
...Q: Pardon...
...A: All right, you want to look at the Report...
...Just because I'm not mentioned beyond Act II, Scene ii doesn't mean my husband's dear nephew wouldn't have liked to trouble me with a green sickness...
...Well, how does your strained credulity account for the fact that not a single one of the people who were allegedly in the Capitol at the time of my husband's murder HI, ed through the Commission Report...
...But anyway, what does Octavius' flunky answer...
...Got out while the getting was good...
...The one who dreams about lions whelping and graves yawning...
...Tear him to pieces for his bad verses...
...Q: What about Antony...
...Q: The mistaken killing of Cinna the poet by the mob...
...Q: Ah, you knew where Octavius' skeletons were hidden...
...Or would you buy, the Bacon Commission...
...They may doubt the authenticity of our interviewee's version of events transpiring during that inauspicious feast of the Lupercalia...
...In the Commission's Supplementary Egyptian Report...
...Lying there on that cold marble floor...
...A: Right...
...A lie...
...Then there was the flight of Pindarus, "Far from this country...
...With half so good a will" only meant he had rotten lawyers draw up his last testament...
...A: The Marlowe Commission...
...The hearsay indictment of that right-wing paranoid, Artimedorus...
...A: People would just say, "There's that crazy woman again...
...So why didn't I speak up before...
...A: As you like it, gumba, but you can't blame an old tyrant's widow for trying...
...What should we call the book...
...Q: You tell me, Signora...
...Sure, Octavius Caesar...
...Brutus says, "I killed not thee," so how do you twist that into a confession...
...A: Before Brutus died, there was Cassius, et Cato the Younger, et—and I'm quoting the Report here—"an hundred Senators...
...Q: Your husband's nephew, you say...
...If there was anything Mark wasn't, it was ironic...
...Yet the dogs of doubt, let slip, are not easily curbed, despite the fact that it was to bury, not to reappraise, such doubt that the Commission was originally appointed in 1623 A.D...
...Q: What you're implying then is the systematic, deliberate elimination of witnesses...
Vol. 9 • August 1976 • No. 10
