Rhetorical Devices Used In Brutus Speech

Having had murdered his best friend and countries leader, Brutus attempts to justify his crimes, as well as the crimes of the conspirators, during a speech to the Roman people. Brutus uses pathos-filled diction, calling the audience “Romans” to incite patriotism, “countrymen” to unite himself and his audience, and “lovers” as a term of endearment, further bringing him closer to the crowd. He starts his defense using parallelism, commanding to “Hear me… Believe me… [and] Censure me” and reversing his sentence structure to create a verbal appealing seemingly logical argument. Moreover, he repeats these lines to remind the audience of his honorable and trustworthy reputation. He defends this reputation when using honeyed diction to describe his