Remembering Greece in Shakespeare’s Rome

Abstract

This paper examines Shakespeare’s reception of Plutarch, whose Lives

furnished his vision of ancient Rome. Examination of Antony’s prophecy of

revenge in Julius Caesar reveals significant continuities as well as revealing

departures. Among other changes Shakespeare imports into this speech Atē

(“blindness, disaster”), which he reads as an infernal spirit of discord.

Shakespeare also translates the mysterious, intransigently alien daimōn

(“god, tutelary spirit, fortune”) into Caesar’s ghost, a Senecan revenge

spirit. George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and the author of Caesar’s Revenge

show similar patterns of adoption. But Shakespeare shows a remarkable

independence from Plutarch and from early modern translators and

playwrights. He rejects the purposeful supernaturalism in Plutarch that

renders Roman and Greek history moral and comprehensible; he also

rejects the contemporary adaptation of this supernaturalism into a

Christian hermeneutic. The march of Roman history in Julius Caesar does

not manifest God’s controlling hand.

Keywords: Julius Caesar, Plutarch, Sir Thomas North, Atē, Daimōn,

Classical reception