Re: Voters Will Ignore History....Apology

Whoops! I got suckered...

Caesar Didn't Say It; Shakespeare Didn't Write It

From the mailbag...



Dear Guide:

The following quote has been widely distributed on the Net and attributed to
Julius Caesar:

Beware the leader who bangs the
drums of war in order to whip the
citizenry into a patriotic fervor,
for patriotism is indeed a
double-edged sword. It both
emboldens the blood, just as it
narrows the mind.

And when the drums of war have
reached a fever pitch and the blood
boils with hate and the mind has
closed, the leader will have no
need in seizing the rights of the
citizenry. Rather, the citizenry,
infused with fear and blinded by
patriotism, will offer up all of
their rights unto the leader and
gladly so.

How do I know? For this is what I
have done. And I am Caesar.


I can find no verifying source stating unequivocally that Caesar said or wrote
this. I did locate one obscure message board, discussions between professors of
Latin literature, where one guy asked his colleagues if they knew whether or not
it was true, and the two replies he received were skeptical.

It sounds rather like something Caesar might have said, but I have this "thing"
for truth and accuracy (even if the sentiment supports my personal belief
system). Could you apply your research talents to discover if ol' Julius did, in
fact, write or say this?


Dear Reader:

It's odd, to say the least, to encounter a passage
attributed to Julius Caesar which, as far as I can
tell, never appeared in print before 2001. It's
equally odd that while the passage is cited in
dozens of Internet discussions concerning
post-9/11 political developments, it never turns up
in articles on Julius Caesar himself. If it is to be
found among his own writings, no one has yet
been able to pinpoint where.

It has also been attributed (most famously by a
red-faced Barbra Streisand) to William
Shakespeare, who presumably would have
composed the lines for his historical play, "Julius
Caesar" — but they're nowhere to be found there,
either. Apart from one small phrase, "And I am
Caesar," which vaguely echoes the closing words
of a couplet in the play ("I rather tell thee what is
to be fear'd / Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar."), the language is
anachronistic and distinctly un-Shakespearean. The words "patriotism" and
"citizenry" were unknown in Elizabethan England. The Bard's Julius Caesar
spoke in iambic pentameter, not mediocre prose.

Short of the culprit stepping forward, there's little likelihood of ascertaining
who did write this politically convenient baloney, but we know it wasn't
Shakespeare and we can be reasonably sure it wasn't Julius Caesar. It does,
however, bear all the markings of a "classic" Internet hoax.