IF YOU DECIDE TO TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS, TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS

In the small hours of the 14^th- 15^th March 44 BC, certain conspirators against Caesar gathered in an orchard and decided Mark Anthony should stay alive. ‘Let us be sacrificers not butchers’.

DECIUS BRUTUS

Shall no man else be touch'd but only Caesar?

CASSIUS

Caesar

Decius, well urged: I think it is not meet,

Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,

Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him

A shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means,

If he improve them, may well stretch so far

As to annoy us all: which to prevent,

Let Antony and Caesar fall together.

BRUTUS

Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,

To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,

Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;

For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:

Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar;

Antony

And in the spirit of men there is no blood:

O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,

And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,

Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,

Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds:

And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,

Stir up their servants to an act of rage,

And after seem to chide 'em. This shall make

Our purpose necessary and not envious:

Which so appearing to the common eyes,

We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.

And for Mark Antony, think not of him;

For he can do no more than Caesar's arm

Brutus

When Caesar's head is off.

CASSIUS

Yet I fear him;

For in the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar--

BRUTUS

Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him:

If he love Caesar, all that he can do

Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar:

And that were much he should; for he is given.

To sports, to wildness and much company.

TREBONIUS

There is no fear in him; let him not die;

For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.

………………

Big mistake? Whose to say, but it would most certainly have changed things.