Finished: Julius Caesar (Shakespeare). Another classic! :-) I decided to read Julius Caesar right after reading I, Claudius since so many of the characters were the same. I, Claudius didn't cover the exact same events, but it was interesting to keep the historical characters in my mind. I've seen the play, Julius Caesar, twice...but had never read the book. I think both times I saw the play, the last scenes of battle happened so quickly that I never got to fully appreciate the actual dialogue. As usual, I loved Shakespeare's writing!

Of course, I loved Mark Antony's classic speech to the public after Julius Caesar was slain..."Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears...". He craftily turns the crowd against Brutus and the others who have just killed Caesar, while moments before the crowd was backing the very same people.

I also loved reading the famous line uttered by Casca when he didn't understand a conversation because it was spoken in Greek, "...it was Greek to me."

And, I loved the self-description of Brutus' honor:
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye and death i' th' other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me, as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.

And, the famous line when Caesar realizes that Brutus has betrayed him as well as the others. So short, yet so powerful:

"Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar."

And, finally, I loved Shakespeare's own prediction that this scene of Caesar's death would be played over and over for hundreds of years to come as Cassius encourages his fellow murderers to bathe their hands in Caesar's blood:

Stoop then, and wash. How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!