Though there is an irony there. Brutus was very famously a descendant of the killer of the last king of Rome and his family built a lot of power and reputation on it. To acquiesce to a new king, much less as a friend of him would’ve destroyed not only the republic, but his family’s name and would’ve left him in infamy.

It’s easy to look back with the perspective that the killing of Caesar was one of the last major events of the Roman republic and precedes an empire that lasted centuries, but they didn’t know that. To Brutus the Julian dynasty might’ve ended up just a few years between republican centuries, or it could e been something entirely disastrously long but completely preventable.

Would any of us kill a close friend to save democracy? I hope I would.