In the world of today, persuasion constantly captivates people's minds, bending them in many different ways. They almost have no authority on which way their life travels. Politicians soften them with their choice words; advertisers try to gain their money with their arguments. Even friends will try to convince a person to do something, all using the art of persuasion. Every way you turn, the power of language bombards your feelings and emotions, and the way it is shaped can affect your way of thinking entirely. This is not only true in the modern world, but it was true in the ancient world as well.
In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, the peasants and the everyday people had really no minds of their own. Just like today, their viewpoints and outlooks on life could easily be changed by a speaker's ingenuity. The most critical moment of the story, however, is the speech at the Forum in Act III, Scene II. The two speakers, Marcus Brutus and Mark Antony, are both friends of Julius Caesar; however, the difference between them is that Brutus was part of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, yet Antony stayed true to him. After Caesar's death, the whole city of Rome proceeded to the Forum to hear exactly what happened and what should be accomplished next. Both orators had to express their positions on the matter, and attempt to win the audience over to their respective sides.
The first presenter of his opinion is Marcus Brutus. Brutus tries to persuade the crowd first of all by speaking in prose, as opposed to poetry. Shakespeare writes the speech this way to show that Brutus is acting like one of the common people himself. Next, he asks the crowd to use reason instead of emotion to judge him, as many people loved Caesar greatly. This establishes the notion that to judge against him would be unreasonable and erroneous. After stating that Caesar is better dead than alive, Brutus uses an excellent choice of wording for his next argument, stating that only the unpatriotic and loathsome could be offended by his words.
