CAESAR                      I should have known no less.

It hath been taught us from the primal state

That he which is was wished until he were,

And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,

Comes deared by being lacked. This common body,

Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

Goes to, and back, licking the varying tide,

To rot itself with motion.                  (1.4.40-47)

The thing about Caesar is that he’s entirely reasonable: he speaks truth, and yet is a fundamentally unattractive character. So, responding to the news of Pompey’s growing support, the way in which the malcontents and hard-done-bys of the empire are flocking to him, he says, well, no surprises there, tell me something I don’t know. I should have known no less. It hath been taught us from the primal state, since time immemorial, throughout human history, that he which is was wished until he were—that the leader who is passionately supported, who is the answer to everyone’s prayers, whose name is on everyone’s lips, well, once they’ve won, they’re yesterday’s news and, even more, yesterday’s solution to today’s problems. It’s all in the anticipation; the reality never lives up to expectations in politics. People are only human. And, by the same token, the ebbed man, the leader whose fortunes are waning, who’s on the way out, is never loved and valued so much as when they’re worthless, completely out of office and out of luck. Then they become deared by being lacked: absence makes the heart grow fonder. (Octavius Caesar is, after all, Julius Caesar’s adopted heir.) The people aren’t just fickle but contrary, and the grass is always greener. (‘I shall be loved when I am lacked’, rages Coriolanus the super-Roman, in the next tragedy that Shakespeare writes.) This common body, the populace, the mob—or just ordinary people— are like to a vagabond flag upon the stream. Here flag is a rush, like a leaf in the torrent, a straw on the wind, drifting here and there, at the mercy of the current. (A vagabond flag sounds to modern ears like a nautical flag of convenience too, or a false flag, politically and morally adrift, wandering in error, billowing in the breeze, blown by every wind.) The people simply go backwards and forwards, to and back, licking the varying tide like an obsequious servant (some texts emend to lackeying), suggestible and easily swayed, with no will of their own, to rot itself with motion. The people are corrupt; they go nowhere of their own volition, but simply drift along in the wake of the powerful. Any sense of their movement and their allegiances as active and purposeful is an illusion; it’s purposeless decay.