Thomas Jones’s LRB review (6 December 2018; archived) of Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest has lots of biographical and historical details, but this is the tidbit I couldn’t resist:
When Caesar saw Brutus among his attackers, Plutarch writes, ‘he covered his head with his toga and let himself fall.’ Suetonius adds that, according to some reports, he said in Greek: ‘Kai su, teknon’ (which Shakespeare turned into the Latin ‘Et tu, Brute?’). It literally means ‘You too, child,’ but what Caesar may have intended by the words isn’t clear. Tempest cites ‘an important article’ by James Russell (1980) ‘that has often been overlooked’. Russell points out that the words kai su often appear on curse tablets, and suggests that Caesar’s putative last words were not ‘the emotional parting declaration of a betrayed man to one he had treated like a son’ but more along the lines of ‘See you in hell, punk.’
I sure hope that’s plausible to classicists, because I want to believe!
I thought the reference was to Caesar’s (well-known) affair with Servilia, Brutus’s mother? (though the dates don’t work for Brutus to have actually been his illegitimate son.)
If that was the reason for the words being put in Caesar’s mouth, presumably they were meant to be taken in the pathetic oh-the-humanity sense.
A pdf of Russell’s paper, ‘Julius Caesar’s Last Words: A Reinterpretation’ (in Bruce Marshall, ed., Vindex Humanitatis. Essays in Honour of John Huntly Bishop (1980)) is available here, among other places.
Cultural perceptions and depictions of Brutus have historically been highly variable and not much based on actual historical events. Dante placed Brutus and Cassius as the greatest of sinners, along with Judas. In Anglophone culture, the view of Brutus is heavily influenced by Shakespeare, who made Brutus a tragic hero and Cassius a complex character. Moreover, many people have interpreted The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (particularly in connection with Caesar’s last words) as indicating that Brutus has been a loyal friend and follower of Caesar before the plot—which was absolutely not the case in fact, and I don’t think is actually ever stated in the play either. In fact, Brutus had been a supporter of Pompey during Caesar’s Civil War—probably due to the influence of his cousin Cato, and in spite of the fact that Brutus’s actual father had been murdered by the adulescentulus carnifex.
Russell’s paper answers very cleanly my immediate question: why did Caesar use Greek in his last words? As he says, it doesn’t make sense for him to have switched to Greek to make a sentimental parting statement; it does make sense for him to have used a common stock phrase, though a foreign one (as Russell says, like “Gesundheit” or “ciao”).
Last words of Anton Chekov were German “Ich sterbe” Don’t know the explanation.
Last words of the dying pedant (I forget the French source, and I adapt the wording):
Has anyone got the source? I used to know it.
That rings a bell, but I too forget the source.
I don’t know who said it, either, but it reminds me of my first day in Classics grad school: the oldest professor encouraged me to take his class in “Pay-leography or Pah-leography, either is correct”.
To return to the main question, I follow a lot of fellow classicists on Twitter and Caesar’s last words come up quite often. The general consensus seems to be that this interpretation is plausible and very likely.
You missed a trick by not posting this four days ago!! Russell’s argument is compelling, although I don’t think he really needs to make a special case of ‘kai su, teknon’ to justify ascribing a Greek phrase to Caesar in his last moments. The upper classes had extensive education in Greek, and there must have been plenty of individuals who were more or less fully bilingual and spoke Greek at least as often as Latin (I realize the extent to which this was the case is debatable). The mention of Servilius Casca calling out to his brother for help in Greek suggests just that, otherwise it would be really random.
“I am about to die, or I am on the point of dying. Both are said.”
This is often attributed to Dominique Bouhours. See page 121, footnote 2, here, which in turn refers to Tableau historique de l’esprit et du caractère des littérateurs françois, by a Mr. T (Antoine Taillefer, I guess), p. 277, available here.
M. T is this dude, top of page 434, I guess.
For the belated Ides, this lovely, obnoxious bit of sketch comedy.
The phrase Xerîb links to is “Je vas, ou je vais bientôt mourir; l’un & l’autre se dit.” These days, at least, vas is dialectal. It sounds like Bouhours was quickly explaining away his non-standard usage, rather than reciting a familiar didactic note (which Noetica’s English version sounds like).
Xerîb and Y, thanks so much for this intelligence.
Here is the treatment of je vas by Vaugelas in his Remarques sur la langue françoise (1647), page 27. However, in 1704, the Académie française explicitly rejected the use of je vas in their Observations of Vaugelas’ Remarques; see page 31 here. Bouhours died in 1702. Perhaps he had been a noted proponent of je vas up to his death…
If that link to the Gallica copy of Vaugelas’ Remarques isn’t working, it doesn’t matter—Vaugelas’ remark approving the form je vas is repeated in its entirety on the page of the Observations that was linked to on archive.org.
I’ve often seen it stated that the upper class spoke Greek natively, much like French in 18th/19th-century Russia; they had to be fluent enough in Latin to give political speeches, though.
Yippee kai su, even.
And to write books.
Were there late Republican authors from Italy who wrote in Greek?
Cato the Younger made a big deal of disdaining the use of Greek among his peers.
‘Both are said’ or ‘both are sad’?
There must be quite a few L2 Famous Last Words though it’s hard to tell how many recorded in Latin over the centuries were silently translated from L1.
If you don’t already know whose last words were ‘Noli timere’ via SMS to his wife, there’s a fair chance you can guess.
It turns out it was Seamus Heaney, which I for one wouldn’t have guessed.
Cato the Younger made a big deal of disdaining the use of Greek among his peers.
I thought that was Cato the Elder?
Ceterum censeo loquentes graece delendos esse.
I’ve often seen it stated that the upper class spoke Greek natively, much like French in 18th/19th-century Russia; they had to be fluent enough in Latin to give political speeches, though.
I assume Caesar also spoke Latin with his troops, as did most aristocratic Roman men. Since Latin was presumably the default language of violence for most Romans, it seems even stranger that Caesar would have reverted to Greek in his dying moments, unless “kai su, teknon” really was a sort of formulaic insult. Sort of the way it’s easy enough to imagine a native German speaker saying “fuck you, asshole” in a similar situation.
Yes, like “Y tu mamá también,” said by all sorts of folk.
Especially if they’ve watched Terminator in the original.
(It’s dubbed as fick dich selber, du Arschloch, which would be pretty idiomatic for “go fuck yourself, asshole”.)
Regarding Chekhov’s last words, the story I read was that he was being treated by German doctors. Allegedly, medical etiquette called for them to offer their patients a glass of champagne to indicate that nothing further could be done. Chekhov took the glass, realized what it meant, and spoke the phrase.
Although then he supposedly said, “I haven’t had champagne for a long time” as his actual last words. Or so says my version.
” “Pay-leography or Pah-leography, either is correct”.
Or /pæliɔgrəfi/ if you’re English.
@David Eddyshaw: You’re right. I was thinking of Caesar’s day so erroneously stuck in the great grandson, who was the dictator’s contemporary. Cato the Younger was, in fact, like many Romans of his time, as admirer of (at least some) Greek culture.