Et tu, Brute?
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"Et tu, Brute?" were, according to legend, the last words of Julius Caesar. In English, the sentence means "You too, Brutus?" or "Even you, Brutus?". It is sometimes translated word-for-word as "And you, Brutus?", but this translation is best avoided, as it can be misleading. The word Brute is pronounced in two syllables, approximately (IPA) [ˈbruːte]; it is sometimes spelled Brutè or Brutë to clarify this.
On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed by an angry group of senators, including 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.
It is almost certain that Caesar 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 child?" (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, LXXXII). The Latin version was made famous by William Shakespeare, who used it in his play, 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, as a snowclone, with the name Brute replaced with something more appropriate (or humorous), e.g., "Et tu, Delia?"
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 form, Brutus, would be used in a sentence such as "Brutus killed Caesar", where Brutus is the grammatical subject of a verb.
In the French speaking world, the version tu quoque, fili mi? ("You also, my son?") is more well known. This version seems to originate in Lhomond's De Viris Illustribus, a 18th century summary of Roman history, which was long used as a standard text by Latin students.
