Death is the only certain thing in the life of each and every human being, and yet it is the thing everybody is afraid of the most. I have seen only one man who is not at all afraid of death—Julius Caesar. I am not talking about the real Caesar, but the Caesar of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.
At the very beginning of the play, when a soothsayer tells Caesar to beware the ides of March, Caesar tells Mark Antony and others that he is a dreamer and simply ignores his warning. And on the ides of March, when his wife Calpurnia tells him not to go forth, Caesar says:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;/ The valiant never taste of death but once./ Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,/It seems to me most strange that men should fear;/ Seeing that death, a necessary end,/ Will come when it will come."
The conspirators under the leadership of Brutus, murder him inside the Senate hall. And Mark Antony’s brilliant funeral speech by which he wins the sympathy of the hostile people and turns them against the conspirators has been enthralling readers for centuries.
Antony's speech is the finest example of the power of free speech and oratory. Allowing Antony to deliver Caesar's funeral speech, Brutus tells him: "You may take Caesar's body. But you should not find fault with us in your funeral speech; you may speak all good you can think of Caesar ... You can speak after my speech is over."
Brutus says that he killed Caesar not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more. Caesar was killed because he was ambitious. All the people were convinced that Caesar was a person who deserved to be murdered for the good of Rome.
And Mark Antony comes to speak to this hostile audience with Caesar's body in hands. Addressing the people as “Friends, Romans, countrymen," he asks them to lend him their ears and says: "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
/The evil that men do lives after them;/ The good is oft interred with their bones;/ So let it be with Caesar." And he goes on: "When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;/ Ambition should be made of sterner stuff./Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;/And Brutus is an honourable man."
By repeatedly using the word 'honourable' as a pun against the conspirators, Antony successfully turns the people against them and all the conspirators including Brutus had to flee from Rome to escape the wrath of the people. The play is an inspiration for people to strive and not to yield.