Eight things to know about Et Tu Explained
Three famous words, one murder in the Senate, and the ancient and Elizabethan writers who told the story. Here is how this companion to them came about and what it can be trusted for.
Its subject is a single line. The six readings trace “Et tu, Brute?” back through Shakespeare to Suetonius, Plutarch and Cassius Dio, look at Brutus himself, and follow betrayal on into later literature. Where a reading needs Latin or Greek, a translation sits next to it, so neither language is required.
It is meant for curious readers. A student with the play open, someone who has heard that Caesar’s real last words were Greek, anyone wondering how one scene came to stand for treachery.
It works from the texts themselves. Public-domain translations and editions of the ancient and Elizabethan writers, with background from the Folger Shakespeare Library, Dickinson College Commentaries and Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library. Each reading lists what it used.
An AI system wrote it. The readings were drafted by an AI system from those texts. On 2026-10-26 a script fetched every cited page once and confirmed each quotation on the site, word for word, in the text it came from. The editorial policy sets out what that did and did not prove.
No person has checked it. No human editor has reviewed the readings, and neither has a classicist or a Shakespeare scholar. When the guide and one of its named texts seem to part ways, follow the text.
Its pictures are invented. The illustrations are hand-written SVG drawings made for this site, decoration rather than reconstruction. The coin, the playhouse and the hall depict no real object, building or artwork.
It is new, and on its own. The topic comes from the two Latin words in the web address. The site is not connected with any earlier website, business or service that may have used that address, and it neither continues nor stands in for one. It belongs to no library, university, museum or publisher whose texts it quotes, sells nothing, shows no adverts, carries no affiliate links, and puts no cookies or analytics code in your browser.
It cannot be contacted yet. No form, no email address, no phone. If a way to write in is ever opened, this is where it will be announced.