How do Cassius and Brutus die respectively?

• A. Brutus dies by poison; Cassius dies by fall from a balcony.
• B. Brutus and Cassius both die in battle.
• C. Brutus dies by suicide on the battlefield; Cassius dies by suicide after misreading Titinius's fate.
• D. Brutus is executed; Cassius dies of illness.

Answer: (C)

The deaths hinge on two acts of choosing to die rather than submit to defeat. Brutus ends his life on the battlefield after Philippi is lost; overwhelmed by the collapse of his cause, he asks Strato to hold his sword and Brutus runs onto it, dying where his soldiers fought. Cassius dies earlier in the same conflict after a dangerous misunderstanding: he believes Titinius has been killed, a report he receives from his servant Pindarus. Grief and despair drive him to arrange for someone to kill him by sword, and he dies by falling on the blade. Titinius, in truth, is not dead at that moment, which makes Cassius’s death a result of misread fate rather than direct battlefield defeat.