Sic semper tyrannis

[1] Plutarch suggests he either did not have a chance to say anything, or if he did, no one heard it:Caesar thus done to death, the senators, although Brutus came forward as if to say something about what had been done, would not wait to hear him, but burst out of doors and fled, thus filling the people with confusion and helpless fear.

This is also reported by Plutarch in his Life of Gracchus (21.4), where he reacted by quoting Homer’s Odyssey (1.47): ὡς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος, ὅτις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι.

The Seal was planned by Mason and designed by George Wythe, who signed the United States Declaration of Independence and taught law to Thomas Jefferson.

[5] A joke referencing the image on the seal that dates as far back as the Civil War, is that "Sic semper tyrannis" actually means "Get your foot off my neck.

[7] In her non-fiction polemical A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe noted the irony of runaway slave ads appearing in Southern newspapers with nameplate mottos like Sic semper tyrannis and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to god".

[9] John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary that he shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" after shooting U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in part because of the association with the assassination of Caesar.

[13] After Thomas Lawrence Higgins pied anti-gay activist Anita Bryant on live television in October 1977, he remarked "thus always to bigots" as a reference to the phrase.