So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!

The line is spoken in a funerary context in Shakespeare’s Roman tragedy *Julius Caesar*. It occurs after Julius Caesar’s assassination, when Mark Antony is granted permission to speak at Caesar’s funeral. Antony begins by presenting himself as restrained and respectful, ostensibly honoring the conspirators’ claim that Caesar was ambitious. In this opening movement of the funeral oration, Antony asks the audience to allow Caesar’s body to be buried and, with a show of charity, expresses the wish that Caesar may rest in peace and that his shortcomings be treated with gentleness—an ironic prelude to Antony’s later, more incendiary rhetoric.

On its surface, the sentence is a conventional benediction: a hope that the dead may rest and that their errors will be judged mercifully. In context, however, it also functions as strategic understatement. Antony’s apparent generosity—acknowledging “faults” while asking that they “lie gently”—helps him appear fair-minded and nonthreatening, gaining the crowd’s trust. The line thus exemplifies Shakespeare’s interest in rhetoric as political power: a calm, pious-sounding phrase that masks a calculated intent to reshape public feeling. It also touches a broader theme of the play: how reputations are made and unmade after death.