Note: Set (roughly) in the six or eight months preceding the play.


Caesar had an eye for details, which, however else it might be of use to him, he often employed in the care and maintenance of his person and clothing. By extension, he often made similar observations of other men as well.

There was, for example, one afternoon not long after Caesar had returned to Rome from Spain that he caught sight of a pair of startlingly dissimilar togas conversing with one another on the other side of the Forum. To be sure, both were the plain, undyed wool of the toga virilis, worn over tunics also undyed though adorned with the broad, vertical red stripes permitted to Senators, but that was the end of the similarity between them. Even from this distance, Caesar could see that the fabric of one was very finely woven, at least for wool, while the other, to judge by its draping, was clearly much heavier and surely much coarser. As Caesar drew nearer, Finely Woven resolved into a light-weight twill (tunic and toga both cut from the same cloth) worn by Marcus Brutus - a simple elegance, well to be expected of Servilia's son - while Coarsely Woven was revealed to be . . . oh, now that was just hideous. Two clearly different materials: twill toga over a herring-bone tunic, which gross offence was perpetrated by Caius Cassius.

Some months later, when Caesar was thinking of finally settling the impromptu, yet surprisingly fierce competition that he had instigated between Brutus and Cassius for the first praetorship, the one issue that never left Caesar's mind in the lists of their qualifications was not concerned with military achievements, aptitude for law and legal quandaries, or public duties fulfilled or neglected, but rather a recollection of two togas, idly conversing whilst waiting to enter the Senate house. Caesar really could not allow the first and most honourable praetorship to go to a man who could not even co-ordinate his clothing; that position would surely have to fall to Brutus.