Et tu, Brute?
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- For the Halo 3 documentary, see "Et tu, Brute?" Video Documentary
"Et tu, Brute?" is a Latin phrase that was, according to legend, the last words of Julius Caesar. In English, the sentence means "You too, Brutus?" or "Even you, Brutus?". It is sometimes translated word-for-word as "And you, Brutus?", but this translation is best avoided, as it can be misleading. The word Brute is pronounced in two syllables, approximately (IPA) [ˈbruːte]; it is sometimes spelled Brutè or Brutë to clarify this. The quotation is widely used in Western culture as the epitome of betrayal.
On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was attacked by a group of senators, including Marcus Junius Brutus, a senator and Caesar's close friend. Caesar initially resisted his attackers, but when he saw Brutus, he supposedly spoke those words and resigned himself to his fate.
Caesar almost certainly did not, in fact, utter these precise words upon his assassination. Ancient sources report that he either died wordlessly or said "Καὶ σὺ τέκνον" (Kai su, teknon?), Greek for "You too, my child?" (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, LXXXII [1]).
The Latin version was made famous by William Shakespeare, who used it in his play Julius Caesar (act 3, scene 1,85). However, in some other languages, the equivalent Latin translation tu quoque, fili mi? ("You also, my son?") is better known. This version is confirmed in Lhomond's De Viris Illustribus [2], an 18th century summary of Roman history, which was long used as a standard text by Latin students.
The phrase is often misquoted as "Et tu, Brutus?" Brute is the Latin vocative form of Brutus, used when directly addressing the individual in question. The nominative form, Brutus, would be used in a sentence such as "Brutus killed Caesar," where Brutus is the grammatical subject of a verb.
