Et tu, Brute?

"Et tu, Brute?" was, according to legend, the last words of Julius Caesar. In English, it means "You too, Brutus?" or "Even you, Brutus?". The word Brute is pronounced with two syllables, approximately (IPA) [ˈbruːte]. To clarify this, sometimes the word is spelled Brutè or Brutë.

Julius Caesar was stabbed in the back by an angry group of senators, led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's great friend and senator. Caesar initially resisted his attackers, but when he saw Brutus, he supposedly spoke those words and resigned himself to his fate.

Caesar almost certainly did not actually say these exact words. Ancient sources report that he either died wordlessly, or said "Καὶ σὺ τέκνον" (Kai su teknon), Greek for "You too, my son?" (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, LXXXII). The Latin version was made famous by Shakespeare who used it in his Julius Caesar (act 3, scene 1,77).

People often cite this quotation when they feel they have been betrayed. This is normally done tongue-in-cheek, and the name Brute replaced with something more appropriate (or humorous), e.g. "Et tu, John?"

The phrase is often misquoted as "Et tu, Brutus?" Brute is the Latin vocative form of Brutus, used when directly addressing the individual in question. The nominative Brutus form would be used in a sentence such as "Brutus killed me", where Brutus is the gramatical subject of a verb.