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Earlier in the quarrel, where Brutus asks why, after striking down the foremost man in all the world for supporting land agents and others, should they do the same thing and contaminate their fingers with base bribes?

I’d rather be a dog and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.

Cassius says:

Brutus, bait not me
I’ll not endure it: you forget yourself,
To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,
Older in practice, abler than yourself
To make conditions.

Brutus: Go to, you are not, Cassius.

Cassius: I am.

Brutus: I say you are not.

And so they get to it again until:

Cassius: Is it come to this?

Brutus: You say you are a better soldier:
Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,
And it shall please me well: for mine own part,
I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

Cassius: You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus;
I said, an elder soldier, not a better.
Did I say better?

(What big boys they were–and what big boys we all are!)
Brutus: If you did, I care not.

Cassius: When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.

Brutus: Peace, peace! you durst not thus have tempted him.

Cassius: I durst not!

Brutus: No.

Cassius: What! Durst not tempt him!

Brutus: For your life you durst not.

Cassius: Do not presume too much upon my love;
I may do that I shall be sorry for.

Brutus: You have done that you should be sorry for.

And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is cleared up at the expense of the messenger.

Cassius: …. Brutus hath rived my heart
A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

Brutus: I do not, till you practise them on me.

Cassius: You love me not.

Brutus: I do not like your faults.

Cassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults.

Brutus: A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear
As huge as high Olympus.

Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and all the rest of ’em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he’s tired of the world (“Cassius is aweary of the world,” he says). He’s hated by one he loves (that’s Brutus). He’s braved by his “brother” (Brutus), checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and puts ’em down in a note-book, and learns ’em over and gets ’em off by memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than all the quids–or rather gold–which Brutus said he wouldn’t lend him. He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved Cassius.

Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded Northerners–and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of Brutus’s seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world could do it.

Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt) and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he liked, Brutus wouldn’t mind him:

…. Dishonour shall be humour.
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire,
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark
And straight is cold again.

Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him.

Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief and blood ill-temper’d vexeth him.

Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-temper’d too.