Roman senator Gaius Cassius Longinus — the primary organizer of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar — who is in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar the lean and hungry pragmatist who envies Caesar's greatness and recruits the idealistic Brutus to give the conspiracy moral legitimacy.
Represents in Shakespeare's play the political realist who uses idealism instrumentally — Cassius's manipulation of Brutus is the perfect Girardian case of using another's virtue as a tool — making Cassius the contrast to Brutus's tragic idealism.
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