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How Does Mark Antony Use Ethos In Julius Caesar

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In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, after the assassination of Caesar, and upon the completion of Brutus’ speech to the angered crowd, Mark Antony, a very good friend of Caesar, with Caesar's body in hand, begins to give a speech that turns the Romans against the conspiracy. He adopts a reverent tone, to play into the audiences inner emotions of Caesar’s death. Antony appeals to the audiences pathos by using paralipsis and epanodos to instill his thoughts about the conspiracy to the people of Rome. In his introduction, Mark Antony introduces Caesar as if he believes that Caesar was truly an evil person. He says, “The evil that men do lives after them”, this is an attempt to get the people to start connecting with him and listening to what he has to say. In Act 3. Sc 2. Line 83: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”, the paralipsis occurs. Mark Antony says he didn’t come to praise Caesar, even though he talks well of Caesar the entire time, not including the mockery of Brutus calling Caesar ambitious. This paralipsis plants the seed of Caesar being a good person, and as Antony continues talking, the seed grows and eventually the person is mourning of Caesar, without Mark Antony saying anything but eight words. This furthers Mark Antony’s purpose because it starts off the …show more content…

Mark Antony repeats the phrase “Brutus is an honorable man” in order to show that what Brutus has been telling them has been false, that Caesar was not at all ambitious. This rhetorical device is the most effective out of the entire speech, because the idea the Mark Antony wants to spread it drilled into each and every person that is listening to Antony’s speech. Every “chunk” has in someway degrading the honor of Brutus and the conspiracy in one way or another. Without this device, Mark Antony would most likely not have been able to gain the leverage he had against

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