Julius Caesar: Act 3, scene 2

Both Brutus and Antony have the unique ability to sway the Roman mob with their words, but in the end it is Antony who gives the more convincing argument.
Brutus begins by portraying himself as a noble and honorable man. Brutus then goes on to say, “I weep for Caesar in that he was good to me. I rejoice in his good fortune. I honor him for being brave. But his ambition—for that, I killed him”. He uses language to portray Caesar as a leader who did some good, but possessed the fatal flaw of ambition. He even goes as far as to say that he loved Caesar, but he loves Rome more. So he is justifying his actions with the idea that he was acting in the peoples best interests. The people of course see the situation from his point of view and are almost grateful to Brutus for his action against their dictator.
When Antony takes the podium the crowd immediately senses his sorrow over the loss of Caesar. He speaks as though he is one of the people, in one part of his speech even coming down into the mob. He refers to Brutus as “noble Brutus” and says, “Brutus is an honorable man”. Antony understands that Brutus has the support of the people so he makes his argument that Caesar was not ambitious in subtle ways at first. He speaks of the good that Caesar did and how he loved the people more than himself. He introduces the idea of reading Caesar’s will to the crowd and ultimately has them begging for him to read it. Antony is an expert at playing on the emotions of the crowd. He knows what he wants to do, but he leads the mob into asking him to do it making him seem unaggressive but giving him power.
In the end Antony’s argument prevails and he has Brutus fleeing for his life. I think that this is a perfect example of the power of language. Antony did a great job of using it in a way to make people take action.