@clacke
with his toga and let himself fall.’ Suet-
onius adds that, according to some reports,
he said in Greek: ‘Kai su, teknon’ (which
Shakespeare turned into the Latin ‘Et tu,
Brute?’). It literally means ‘You too, child,’
but what Caesar may have intended by the
words isn’t clear. Tempest cites ‘an import-
ant article’ by James Russell (1980) ‘that
has often been overlooked’. Russell points
out that the words kai su often appear on
curse tablets, and suggests that Caesar’s
* Lo
putative last words were not ‘the emotion-
—
ee ree
al parting declaration of a betrayed man to
me he had treated like a son’ but mor
one he had treated like a son’ but more
along the lines of ‘See you in hell, punk.’ /
are