CAESAR’S ASSASSINATION (Intermediate-Advanced)

1.     What do you know about Caesar and his time?

2.     Why do you think he was killed?

3.     Find definitions for the words below before reading the test:

·        Imperialistic

·        Instigate

·        Adoration

·        Civic

·        Irritated

·        Offspring

·        Regime

·        Assassinate

·        Calamity

·        Distinguished

This public adoration irritated the Republicans to the highest degree. They secretly charged Cæsar with encouraging or instigating this worship of himself, because they knew that his friends would not have proposed it unless confident that he would be pleased by it. Brutus and Cassius were at the head of these Republicans. Brutus, a stern Republican, a Roman in the noblest acceptation of the word, was reputed to be Cæsar’s son, the offspring of an adulterous love-affair, and was openly favored and distinguished by him. Cassius, a distinguished general, was much more prompted by jealousy and envy than by civic virtue and republican principle. When these two men and their friends became thoroughly convinced that Cæsar’s ambition would stop at nothing, and that the new imperialistic régime was to be permanent, they came to the conclusion that nothing but Cæsar’s death could prevent these calamities. They therefore resolved to assassinate him.