In Julius Caesar there are no heroes, only heroic words spoken by men of ambition, arrogance, and jealousy. Yet Julius Caesar is also one of Shakespeare's most popular and polished works, a seamless blend of highly-stylized oratory and penetrating soliloquies that lays bare the innermost workings of the human mind. Here is Shakespeare in his prime, taking the story of history's most notorious assassination and fashioning from it a brilliant and at times chilling indictment of politics by violence and of how even the strongest and noblest of minds can be corrupted by flattery and the lure of power.