Shakespeare's political sophistication seems boundless. In Julius Caesar, for example, he delineates the endless cycle toward, and then away from, centralized power. He embodies it in the character of Cassius, a man who knows enough of both Rome and himself to make his cynicism work for political ends, but who can't overcome his distrust of his own nature. He understands the dangers presented by Mark Antony much more clearly than Brutus does, but he lets himself be over-ruled in the play's moment of crisis: the decision of whether to allow Mark Antony to speak at Caesar's funeral. And we are introduced to this double nature the first time we meet him. At the end of 1.2, after his having convinced Brutus to at least consider joining the plot to assassinate Caesar, he has a moment of astonishing honesty in a brief soliloquy at the end of the scene. In it, he imagines telling Brutus the truth: that an honest man should avoid people like him (Cassius, that is), and that if he were loved by Caesar the way that Brutus is, that he wouldn't allow himself to be talked into upsetting his favoured position by anyone:

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see,

Thy honourable metal may be wrought

From that it is disposed: therefore it is meet

That noble minds keep ever with their likes;

For who so firm that cannot be seduced?

Caesar doth bear me hard; but he loves Brutus:

If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,

He should not humour me.