INTRODUCTION

When Julius Caeser was thinking of setting himself up as king of Rome, or so rumour had it, Brutus was repeatedly reminded by graffiti scrawled on his tribunal: ‘Brutus are you asleep?’ and ‘You are no true Brutus.’ These slogans recalled the deeds of his distant ancestor, who over four hundred years previously had killed the last king of Rome. In ad 22, Brutus' sister Junia, the widow of Cassius (the other leading assassin of Caesar), finally died; the busts of twenty leading families, to whom she was related by blood or marriage, were paraded in her funeral procession, though out of political tact to the emperor Tiberius Caesar the busts of both Cassius and Brutus were omitted (Tacitus, Annals 3.76). The public display of noble ancestry was ‘a matter of pride among the ancients, and was considered a mark of status and success’. Noble descent enhanced a man's status and political prospects. Cicero, for example, once taunted an opponent, Piso: