This week, we have started to learn about Julius Caesar, the Shakespeare play. And in doing that, we made body biographies on some of the cast. We did ours on Gaius Cassius.
A body biography is something where you research a person, trace someone, make symbols on the body that represent the person, and cut it out.
I’m going to tell you why we put everything, well, everywhere. Lets start with his brain.
When Gaius Cassius was young, he studied philosophy in Rhodes. So to represent that, we placed glasses, books and telescopes in his brain. But this was long before he became a senator and warrior. Which leads me to our next point.
Gaius Cassius was a senator, governor, tribune of the plebs. But he had an army that conquered many a mile. They, along with his allies including Marcus Brutus traveled far and wide. Speaking of Brutus, let’s move on to the conspiracy.
Cassius was one of the leaders in the conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar. But he didn’t do the dirty work, oh no. He urged them on, feeding them ideas to kill Caesar. Brutus was the one to kill him. Did you know that Brutus and Cassius were half-brothers? Neither did I. Family is complicated. Which takes us to our next point.
In 60 BCE, Gaius Cassius had a baby boy with his wife, Junia Tertia. Junia Tertia was the daughter of Servilia, who was also the mother of Marcus Brutus. That’s how Cassius and Brutus are related.
Gaius Cassius was a very outspoken and argumentative person. This made him a great public speaker. We put the megaphone on there to represent his loud voice.
Cassius traveled far and wide, as I mentioned before, conquering many lands. We placed the roads to represent all the places he had travelled.
While in the senate, Cassius and Lentulus Spinther issued a coin called the Denarius, for the military mint.
And last, but definitely not least, in 48 BCE, Cassius rode to Sicilia. While there he famously burnt a large part of Caesar’s navy. We put the burning boat on the foot because he traveled far to complete this feat!
I hope you learned a lot from this. I sure did!