Was Julius Caesar the Biological Father of His Frenemy Brutus?

Et Tu, My Son?

Bust of Brutus
Marie-Lan Nguyen (2006)/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Caesar went out of his way for Marcus Junius Brutus (also known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus), sparing Brutus after he had stood against Caesar and with his rival Pompey at Pharsalus, and then choosing him as praetor for 44. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar resolves to die only when he sees that even Brutus is against him. One explanation for this preferential behavior is that Caesar might have been Brutus's father.

Caesar had a passionate and long-term affair with the mother of Brutus, Servilia, the maternal half-sister of Cato, conservative senator and bitter personal enemy of Caesar. Cicero calls her "the warm friend and perhaps mistress of Caesar" in one of his letters to his pal Atticus. Brutus was proud of his anti-monarchic family heritage, a descendant of the famous Junius Brutus, who helped kick out the kings of Rome. But Servilia bore such ancestry, too; as Plutarch recounts in his Life of Brutus, "Servilia, the mother of Brutus, traced her lineage back to Servilius Ahala," who killed Spurius Maelius "who was seditiously plotting to usurp absolute power."

​Once, when Caesar and Cato were in a knock-down, drag-out fight in the Senate, "a little note was brought in from outside to Caesar," according to Plutarch's Life of Cato the Younger. ​Cato figured that Caesar was involved in some conspiracy and demanded that the note be read aloud; making things really awkward, the piece of paper turned out to contain a love letter to Caesar from Servilia! Cato threw the letter at Caesar and just kept on talking.

Was Brutus the Son of Caesar?

Could Caesar have sired a son during his affair with Servilia? Possibly. It is objected that Caesar would have only been fifteen at the time Brutus was born, although this hardly precludes the possibility. If Caesar was his dad, that would make Brutus an even worse criminal than he already was, since he'd have committed patricide, one of the most awful deeds possible. Still, most scholars discount the idea that Caesar was Brutus's father.

Writing around 110 A.D., Plutarch does not clearly resolve the issue, but he does explain why Caesar may have considered Brutus his son. The fifth paragraph from Plutarch's Life of Brutus, on the paternity issue, contains a related, famous anecdote simultaneously showing Caesar besting Brutus' uncle Cato and also how enduring Caesar's relationship with Brutus's mother was.


-Edited by Carly Silver