Brutus

Brutus is Voltaire's Roman tragedy of liberty, duty, sacrifice, and the severe demands of republican honour. Set in the early Roman Republic, the play centres on Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of Roman liberty, as he is forced to choose between his duty to the state and his love for his son. Voltaire turns an ancient Roman subject into a sharp Enlightenment drama about tyranny, law, political principle, paternal feeling, and the terrible cost of public virtue.First produced in 1730, Brutus shows Voltaire using classical tragedy to examine the conflict between private affection and civic responsibility. The play's Roman setting gives it historical grandeur, but its real force lies in the political and moral question at its centre: what must a free republic demand from those who claim to defend it? Translated by William F. Fleming, this edition is a strong Wilder title for readers of French drama, Enlightenment literature, political tragedy, Roman republican history, classical theatre, and eighteenth-century European writing.