The Clinton camp's Shakespearean assault on FBI Director James Comey

What the Democrats seem to have learned from Julius Caesar

FBI Director James Comey.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

One of the most famous political speeches in history is actually a masterpiece of historical fiction. On March 20, 44 B.C., Marcus Antonius gave the eulogy at the funeral of slain Roman leader Julius Caesar, riling up the crowd with Caesar's good works and bloody toga, and thus defeating the Roman senators who had stabbed the would-be emperor to death to save the Republic. What most of us know of that speech and that day was written by William Shakespeare — and perhaps Democrats had that speech in mind when they were deciding how to handle FBI Director James Comey's unexpected late entry into the 2016 presidential race.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," Shakespeare's Mark Antony began, in the most famous lines of the speech. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." But it was his repetition of the phrase "and Brutus is an honorable man," at first with apparent sincerity but increasingly as a way to impugn the honor of the reluctant leader of Caesar's assassination, that allowed him to turn the crowd against Brutus and the other conspirators.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.