Marcus Junius Brutus (85-42 BC) was a Roman statesman and one of the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar. Brutus's contemporaries admired him for his political integrity and intellectual and literary attainments.

The father of Brutus took part in the unsuccessful attempt of M. Aemilius Lepidus to overthrow the government of L. Cornelius Sulla and was killed by Pompey in 78 B.C. Brutus's mother, Servilia, was the niece of the reformer M. Livius Drusus and half sister of M. Porcius Cato the Younger. She became notorious as the mistress of Julius Caesar. After the death of his father, Brutus was adopted by his uncle and took the name Quintus Caepio Brutus. But Cato exercised the dominant influence over him in his youth. Under Cato's direction Brutus began his philosophical studies in Rome and continued them in Athens.

Brutus may have been the Q. Caepio who had been engaged to...