Pathos In Julius Caesar

The historical play, “Julius Caesar”, by William Shakespeare illustrates the problems of leadership that commence after the assassination of the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar. The play has a thorough use of rhetorical devices and was a powerful persuasion tool during the whole of the show. This literary device is extensively used during the funeral scene in Act three, Scene two where Marcus Brutus and Mark Antony give their speeches about Caesar's death. In their funeral speeches, while Marcus Brutus delivered a logical speech, Mark Antony overall wins the crowd through his use of ethics and empathy. Antony’s speech left such a lasting impact due his skillful use of Pathos. Pathos is an appeal to one’s empathy. Pathos is the most persuasive rhetorical device due to the effect it has on a crowd. Antony carefully uses words that will create a strong emotional connection with the audience. He appeals to the audience through emotion and Brutus can’t establish that same relationship because he speaks logically to the crowd, which gives facts, but it doesn’t have any emotion that the audience can use to bond with Brutus. An instance where Antony uses pathos during the funeral speech is when he says “You all …show more content…
Brutus on the other hand, uses only facts which doesn’t give much credibility and there is no bond between him and the crowd. Antony’s precise word choice allows him to even combine pathos and ethos in one phrase. For example, towards the end of the funeral speech, Antony says “But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world: now he lies there.” Antony appeals to the empathy of the crowd by making them feel sad about his death, especially when he says “now he lies there”. He also shows Caesar was morally good because Caesar was willing to stand against the world just for