Brutus (Marcus)

Cæsar’s friend, joined the conspirators to murder him, because he made himself a king.

“And thou, unhappy Brutus, kind of heart,

Whose steady arm, by awful virtue urged,

Lifted the Roman steel against thy friend.”

Thomson: Winter, 524–6.

Et tu, Brute. What! does my own familiar friend lift up his heel against me? The reference is to that Marcus Brutus whose “bastard hand stabbed Julius Cæsar.” (Suetonius.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.