Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" is the first line of a speech by Mark Antony in the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare.

He begins by carefully rebutting the notion that his friend, Caesar, deserved to die because he was ambitious, instead claiming that his actions were for the good of the Roman people, whom he cared for deeply ("When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff").

Antony tells the crowd to "have patience" and expresses his feeling that he will "wrong the honourable men / Whose daggers have stabb'd Caesar" if he is to read the will.

He claims that if he were as eloquent as Brutus, he could give a voice to each of Caesar's wounds ("... that should move / The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny").

After that, Antony deals his final blow by revealing Caesar's will, in which "To every Roman citizen he gives, / To every several man, seventy-five drachmas" as well as land, to the crowd.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

[3][4] The lyrics of Bob Dylan's "Pay in Blood" on his 2012 album Tempest include the line, "I came to bury not to praise.

During a scene where Ernest tries to help give advice to his young friend Kenny after he gets bullied while looking for a place to build a tree house, Ernest recounts a fictional story of Botswana rebelling against the Ottoman Empire, wherein he portrays a Julius Caesar-like figure and at one point recites a paraphrased version of the line; "Friends, Romans, Botswanians, lend me your trees!"