布魯圖 謀反者還是高尚的羅馬人

Among the most poignant objects that survive from the era of the Ides of March — March 15, 44 B.C., the day Julius Caesar fell to the knives of Brutus, Cassius and perhaps 21 other senators — is a dime-size silver denarius, minted by Brutus a year or two after the murder. One side of this rare coin shows ­military-style daggers flanking a felt pileus cap, a symbol of freedom from slavery, and the abbreviation EID MAR. On the other side, remarkably, Brutus had his own portrait stamped. Before this, Caesar was the only Roman who had dared put himself on a coin, for to do so was to assume the stature of a monarch — or a god.

公元前44年3月15日，尤利烏斯·愷撒(Julius Caesar)死在布魯圖(Brutus)、卡西烏斯(Cassius)以及另外約21位元老刀下。在那個時代最令人辛酸的遺物中，有一枚一角硬幣大小的銀幣，是在刺殺事件一兩年後由布魯圖斯下令鑄造的。這枚罕見的銀幣一面正中是一頂無邊氈便帽，象徵擺脫奴隸制度，便帽兩側是兩把軍用匕首，下方是EID MAR這個縮寫，意爲3月15日。值得注意的是，在銀幣的另一面，布魯圖刻上了自己的頭像。在此之前，愷撒是唯一一個敢把自己的頭像刻在銀幣上的羅馬人，這樣做是爲了體現君主（或神）的崇高地位。

How can we understand Brutus, a man who, so soon after stabbing Caesar in the name of stopping tyranny, had so reconciled himself to the ways of tyrants? Shakespeare, in the closing lines of “Julius Caesar,” eulogized Brutus (through the words of his foe, Marc Antony) as “the noblest Roman of them all” — the only conspirator moved by love of the Republic rather than envy of Caesar’s power. Dante, by contrast, in the final canto of “Inferno,” condemned Brutus to be forever chewed by Satan in the lowest circle of hell, alongside Cassius, his accomplice in the sin of betrayal, and Judas Iscariot.

我們怎麼可能理解布魯圖呢？他以阻止專制之名刺死愷撒，之後不久，他自己也開始實行專制。莎士比亞(Shakespeare)在《尤利烏斯·愷撒》(Julius Caesar)的尾聲，借布魯圖的敵人馬克·安東尼(Marc Antony)之口，稱讚布魯圖是“最高尚的羅馬人”——唯一一個出於對共和國的熱愛，而非覬覦愷撒權力而謀反的人。但是，但丁(Dante)在《地獄》(Inferno)的最後一篇中譴責布魯圖，判他在地獄的最底層永遠被撒旦嚼食，和他同在地獄底層的是謀反罪同犯卡西烏斯以及叛徒猶大(Judas Iscariot)。

Dramatists and poets have done better than historians in portraying Brutus and his fellow conspirators. With the freedom to invent speeches, dialogue or even (as in the case of HBO’s series “Rome”) whole plot lines, they can give access to the minds of these men where our surviving ancient sources, with rare exceptions, cannot. The opacity of Caesar’s killers has bedeviled scholars, and it poses challenges for Barry Strauss in “The Death of Caesar.” Covering a time span of only three years — from the year before the Ides to the Battle of Philippi two years after, where Brutus, defeated by pro-Caesar forces, took his own life — this historical study captures the tension of an unfolding crisis but also runs into strong headwinds when it comes to questions of character and motive.

劇作家和詩人對布魯圖及其同夥的描繪勝於史學家。他們可以自由編寫演講、對話，甚至整個情節線索（例如HBO電視劇《羅馬》[Rome]），可以進入這些人的思想，那是現存的古代史料幾乎不可能做到的。愷撒刺殺者們的模糊性一直令學者們苦惱，也給巴里·斯特勞斯(Barry Strauss)撰寫《愷撒之死》(The Death of Caesar)帶來挑戰。這本歷史研究書籍的時間跨度只有三年，從愷撒死前一年到死後兩年的菲利皮之戰(Battle of Philippi)。布魯圖在菲利皮之戰中被愷撒支持者的軍隊打敗，自殺身亡。這本書生動描繪了一場逐漸揭開的危機，捕捉到緊張的氣氛，而且正面迴應了人物性格和動機等棘手問題。

Brutus, in particular, emerges as a blur. He has a long list of reasons for wanting Caesar dead, some admirable, others selfish. Strauss, a professor of history and classics at Cornell, explains these well but gives no sense of their relative weight; he seems uncertain how, in the end, to assess this crucial figure. “Brutus believed in ideals that were bigger than himself — in philosophy, in the Republic, and in his family,” Strauss writes, endorsing Shakespeare’s “noblest Roman” view. But he turns Dantesque in the very next sentence: “And so, once again, Brutus betrayed an older man who trusted him, just as he had earlier betrayed first Pompey and then Cato.”

特別是布魯圖，他的形象很模糊。他想殺死愷撒的原因很多，有些令人欽佩，有些是出於私心。斯特勞斯是康奈爾大學的歷史和古典學教授，他很好地解釋了這些原因，但是沒有說清孰輕孰重。他似乎不確定最後該如何評價這個關鍵人物。“布魯圖信奉比他自己更重要的理想——哲學、共和國和家庭，”斯特勞斯這樣寫道，這似乎是在支持莎士比亞的“最高尚的羅馬人”的觀點。但是就在下一句話中，他轉向了但丁：“所以，布魯圖再次背叛了一位信任他的長者，就像他之前背叛龐培(Pompey)和加圖(Cato)那樣。”

To some degree this blurriness is inevitable. Our sources for this era have many gaps and blind spots, and these difficulties grow as a historian’s time scale shrinks, much as a low-­resolution photograph looks worse the more it is enlarged. But Strauss too often fills these gaps with multiple, even conflicting, possibilities; one wants him to take a stronger interpretive hand. It’s hard to draw out the moral meaning of Caesar’s murder from among a welter of mights and perhapses.

從某種程度上講，這樣的模糊不可避免。那個時代的史料有很多空白和盲點，縮小時間跨度更是加大了難度，就像低像素照片越被放大，看起來就越糟。但是，斯特勞斯過於頻繁地使用許多相互矛盾的可能性來填補這些空白。他的立場應該更明確。從一堆雜亂的可能性中，很難闡釋愷撒刺殺案的道德意義。

“The Death of Caesar” is written in a jaunty style very different from that of other recent studies of Caesar’s times (and the past decade has seen many). “No Brutus, no assassination” is how Strauss formulates his central role in the murder plot; Caesar’s political network is said to be so vast that to record it “would take all the papyrus in Rome.” Folksiness in moderation is refreshing, but Strauss carries it too far, and it sometimes leads him into mixed metaphors or jarring anachronisms (Romans who are described as having “an ace up their sleeve,” when in fact they knew nothing of either playing cards or sleeves).

《愷撒之死》筆調歡快，與近些年對愷撒時代的其他研究（過去十年中我們看到了很多這樣的研究）大相徑庭。“沒有布魯圖，就沒有刺殺案”——斯特勞斯是這樣確立布魯圖在刺殺中的中心地位的。據說愷撒的政治網絡非常龐大，把它完全記錄下來“會用盡羅馬所有的紙莎草”。適度隨意會讓人覺得清新，但是斯特勞斯太過隨意了，有時會導致隱喻的混亂，或不和諧的時代錯誤（書中說羅馬人“袖中藏有王牌”[an ace up their sleeve]，實際上當時的羅馬人既不打牌，衣服也沒有袖子）。

Strauss made his mark as a military historian in books like “The Battle of Salamis” and “The Spartacus War,” and he’s strongest here when tracking Caesar’s army units in the days after the assassination. In contrast to the ancient sources, which tend to ignore nameless legionaries in favor of great leaders, Strauss foregrounds the role played by Caesar’s hardened veterans. Their opposition, he suggests, blocked the conspirators from restoring the supremacy of the Senate, their principal goal. Those who had marched under Caesar’s banners wanted an imperator, a conquering general, to guide the state. Octavian, later Augustus, ultimately became the first in a long line of autocrats who ruled by grace of army support.

斯特勞斯憑藉《薩拉米斯之戰》(The Battle of Salamis)和《斯巴達克思起義》(The Spartacus War)確立了軍事史學家的名聲。在《愷撒之死》中，他寫得最好的是愷撒遇刺後的軍隊組織。古代史料往往忽視無名的軍團士兵，青睞偉大的領袖，斯特勞斯則突出描述了堅定的愷撒老兵們的作用。他說，由於這些人的反對，謀反者沒有實現最主要的目標——恢復元老院的至高地位。那些在愷撒旗幟下前進的人想讓一位絕對統治者——一個能征善戰的將軍——來領導國家。屋大維(Octavian)，也就是後來的奧古斯都(Augustus)，最終成爲那一長串依靠軍隊支持進行統治的獨裁者中的第一位。

Strauss also takes special interest in the most soldierly of the conspirators, a top army officer named Decimus. Slighted by Greco-Roman historians and all but ignored by Shakespeare (who also misspelled his name), Decimus actually played a leading role in the Ides conspiracy, Strauss asserts. The decision of Decimus to join the murder plot is in its way more shocking, as portrayed by Strauss, than the similar choice made by Brutus. But Decimus is little more than a cipher in the ancient record. His prominence here thus leaves Strauss with yet more blank spaces and unanswerable questions.

斯特勞斯還對謀反者中最英勇的那一位特別感興趣，他就是最高軍官德西謨斯(Decimus)。希臘羅馬史學家們對他輕描淡寫，莎士比亞幾乎完全忽視了他（把他的名字都拼錯了），但是斯特勞斯認爲，實際上他在愷撒刺殺案中起着主導作用。根據斯特勞斯的描述，從某種角度講，德西謨斯決定參加刺殺比布魯圖斯做出類似的決定更令人震驚。但是在史料裏，他只是個無足輕重的人。所以，他在《愷撒之死》一書中的重要地位給斯特勞斯留下了更多空白和無法回答的問題。