The Falling Sickness?

What we honestly have is ancient testimony, not “medical proof.

What the ancient sources actually say
Two major biographers written well after Caesar’s death report episodes that sound like seizures:
Suetonius (writing ~150 years later) says Caesar was “twice attacked by the falling sickness” during his campaigns, and also mentions fainting fits and nightmares later in life. 
Plutarch also describes Caesar as having episodes of illness and uses them at times to explain his behavior in public life (though Plutarch’s descriptions are not clinical “case notes”). 
And in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Casca calls it “the falling sickness”—that’s Shakespeare drawing on the same tradition rather than independent medical evidence.   His exact words are He - meaning Julius Caesar - fell down in the market-place, and foamed at the mouth, and was speechless.

Romans often used morbus comitialis for what we’d now associate with epilepsy (the idea being that a seizure could halt a public assembly). 

So: yes, the term points toward epilepsy—but it’s still a label from ancient writers, not a diagnosis with modern criteria.

How reliable is it?
Reasonably important, but not ironclad:

These accounts come from biographies written later, using earlier sources we don’t always have, and they can mix observation, hearsay, and   moral storytelling. 

“Falling sickness” could have been applied loosely to several kinds of sudden collapse—not only epilepsy.

What might it have been, in modern terms?
There’s genuine debate. Some modern clinicians/historians argue the episodes may fit transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes) or other causes of sudden fainting/weakness rather than epilepsy. 
Others still argue that “late-onset epilepsy” remains plausible based on the descriptions. 

Do we have reliable proof? No—no medical records, no exam notes, no contemporary clinical description.

Do we have credible ancient reports that Caesar had episodes called “falling sickness”? Yes, especially Suetonius. 

Transcript

Welcome to celebrate creativity.  This is conversations with Shakespeare, and before we move on, I I would like to delve in this episode into what many historians say was Julius Caesar's epilepsy.

What we honestly have is ancient testimony, not “medical proof.”
What the ancient sources actually say
Two major biographers written well after Caesar’s death report episodes that sound like seizures:
Suetonius (writing ~150 years later) says Caesar was “twice attacked by the falling sickness” during his campaigns, and also mentions fainting fits and nightmares later in life. 
Plutarch also describes Caesar as having episodes of illness and uses them at times to explain his behavior in public life (though Plutarch’s descriptions are not clinical “case notes”). 
And in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Casca calls it “the falling sickness”—that’s Shakespeare drawing on the same tradition rather than independent medical evidence.   His exact words are He - meaning Julius Caesar - fell down in the market-place, and foamed at the mouth, and was speechless.

Romans often used morbus comitialis for what we’d now associate with epilepsy (the idea being that a seizure could halt a public assembly). 

So: yes, the term points toward epilepsy—but it’s still a label from ancient writers, not a diagnosis with modern criteria.

How reliable is it?
Reasonably important, but not ironclad:

These accounts come from biographies written later, using earlier sources we don’t always have, and they can mix observation, hearsay, and   moral storytelling. 

“Falling sickness” could have been applied loosely to several kinds of sudden collapse—not only epilepsy.

What might it have been, in modern terms?
There’s genuine debate. Some modern clinicians/historians argue the episodes may fit transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes) or other causes of sudden fainting/weakness rather than epilepsy. 
Others still argue that “late-onset epilepsy” remains plausible based on the descriptions. 

Do we have reliable proof? No—no medical records, no exam notes, no contemporary clinical description.

Do we have credible ancient reports that Caesar had episodes called “falling sickness”? Yes, especially Suetonius. 

Was that definitely epilepsy? It’s plausible, but not certain; “collapse episodes” have multiple explanations, and modern writers disagree. 
 
Now when Shakespeare has Casca say Caesar has “the falling sickness,” he isn’t inventing a brand-new detail out of thin air. He’s drawing on an old tradition about Caesar’s health that shows up in later ancient biographies.

Here’s the honest answer: we do not have medical records, diagnoses, or anything that would count as proof in a modern sense. What we have are reports written long after Caesar’s death—especially Suetonius, and also Plutarch—saying that Caesar had at least a couple of episodes that people in their world called “the falling sickness.”

Now, that phrase often points in the direction of what we would call epilepsy. But it was also a loose label—ancient writers could use it for different kinds of sudden collapse. And modern historians and physicians still debate what those episodes really were: seizures, fainting spells, mini-strokes, or something else entirely.

When Shakespeare has Casca say Caesar has “the falling sickness,” he’s tapping into an old tradition about Caesar’s health.

We don’t have medical records or anything like modern proof. What we have are later ancient biographers—especially Suetonius, and also Plutarch—who report that Caesar suffered a couple of episodes that were described in their world as “the falling sickness.”

Note That the phrase following sickness often points toward what we would call epilepsy. But it’s not a clean diagnosis. Ancient descriptions can be broad, and modern scholars still debate what those episodes might have been—seizures, fainting, mini-strokes, or another sudden-collapse condition.

So the safest conclusion is this: the tradition exists, it was well-known enough for Shakespeare to use, and it serves a dramatic purpose. It complicates Caesar’s image. The man who looks like a titan of history is also, at moments, physically fragile—and Shakespeare knows exactly how to turn that tension into politics.

In Rome, a leader’s body wasn’t just private business. It was public meaning. Strength, stamina, self-control—those weren’t only personal virtues; they were political assets. And the reverse was also true: any visible weakness could be turned into a story about fitness to rule.

That’s why the “falling sickness” detail matters in Julius Caesar even if we can’t diagnose it. Shakespeare isn’t running a clinic. He’s showing how quickly a crowd—and a rival—can translate a human moment into a political weapon.

Think about the Roman mindset for a second. Romans were intensely practical, but they also lived in a world thick with signs: omens, portents, strange weather, dreams, sacrificial warnings. When something startling happens to the body—especially a sudden collapse—it can be read in two ways at once. One reading is plain and human: “He had an episode. He’s ill.” The other reading is charged and symbolic: “The gods are saying something,” or “Fate is exposing a flaw,” or “Nature itself is commenting on power.”
Now look at who tells us about Caesar’s collapse: Casca. Casca isn’t a neutral observer. He’s one of those people who has decided what Caesar means before he reports what Caesar did. So when Casca brings up “the falling sickness,” he’s not only describing an event; he’s recruiting the event into an argument.

And what is that argument? It’s basically this: “Don’t be hypnotized by the pageantry. Don’t be fooled by the crown and the cheers. Under the costume of greatness, he’s just a man—and maybe not even a steady one.” In other words, Casca wants to puncture the myth of Caesar.
But Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, lets the detail cut both ways. Because there’s another interpretation right there in the scene, even if it’s not spoken aloud: if Caesar has episodes and still stands at the center of Rome’s world, that doesn’t make him small. It makes him complicated. It reminds us that power doesn’t cancel vulnerability—it sometimes hides it, sometimes exploits it, and sometimes fears it.

So here’s the question Shakespeare quietly puts in the listener’s lap: when we hear a report about a leader’s health, are we hearing truth—or are we hearing strategy? Are we watching a human being, or are we watching a story being manufactured in real time?

And that’s why the “falling sickness” matters. Whether it was epilepsy, fainting, or something else, Shakespeare uses it the way politics uses it: not primarily as medicine, but as messaging.

NowIf you’ve listened to my previous Julius Caesar episode, you already know I’m not interested in turning Shakespeare into a museum piece. I want him alive. I want him in the room with us. And that means looking at the strange little details that Shakespeare includes—details that feel oddly modern, because they touch something personal: the body, health, vulnerability, stigma, rumor.

One of those details is what Shakespeare calls “the falling sickness.”
It’s easy to treat that phrase like a throwaway insult. Easy to treat it like one more smear in a play full of smears. But if we slow down, it opens a whole doorway into how Rome thought, how crowds behave, how reputations are manufactured, and how a medical moment becomes a political weapon.

And I want to say something at the start, because it matters. I’m an epileptic. My seizures have been fully controlled through medication for a long time, but I remember what it’s like to live with the fear of the next episode, and I remember what it’s like to be misunderstood. So I’m not coming at this from the angle of gossip. I’m coming at it from the angle of respect.

This episode is not: “Let’s diagnose Julius Caesar.”

This episode is: “What do we actually know, how reliable is it, and how does Shakespeare use the tradition—whether true or not—to explore power?”

Because Shakespeare’s question isn’t medical. Shakespeare’s question is political. The question is not, “What exactly happened to Caesar’s nervous system?” The question is: “What do people do with a story about a leader’s body?”

That’s what we’re going to explore.

1. The phrase that keeps echoing: what “falling sickness” meant
When Shakespeare has a character label Caesar with “the falling sickness,” he’s using a phrase that had a long life before Shakespeare ever put quill to paper.

In early modern English, “falling sickness” commonly referred to what we now call epilepsy—particularly seizures that involve collapsing or losing consciousness. But here’s the important point: it was not a careful medical label. It was a broad public label. It was what people said when they saw something frightening and sudden.

And in the ancient Roman world, there were also phrases and beliefs attached to seizures. One of the most famous labels was the “comitial disease”—the idea that if someone had a seizure during a public assembly, it could be seen as a bad sign, serious enough that the meeting might be halted or postponed. That alone tells you something about the ancient imagination: a seizure wasn’t only a private medical event. It could be interpreted as a public omen.

So even before we touch the question of whether Julius Caesar truly had seizures, we have to understand what a seizure could mean socially.

To us today, the goal is simple: recognize it as a medical condition, treat it appropriately, and treat the person with dignity.

But in Rome, and in Shakespeare’s world too, a sudden collapse could become a moral story, or a religious sign, or a political argument.

The body, in other words, becomes a text. And people read it however they want.

2. Do we have reliable proof Caesar had a seizure disorder
Here is the careful answer.
We do not have “proof” in any modern medical sense. No physician’s notes, no case history, no clear contemporary clinical description written by someone who witnessed it and recorded symptoms in detail.

What we do have are later ancient sources—biographers and historians—who claim that Caesar experienced episodes described as the “falling sickness.”

The names you’ll most often see are Suetonius and Plutarch. Both are valuable. Both are also not perfect mirrors. They wrote long after Caesar’s death. They worked from earlier sources, some of which are lost to us, and they wrote with moral and literary aims as well as historical ones.

So the responsible stance is this:

There is an ancient tradition—serious enough to be repeated—that Caesar had at least a couple of episodes that looked, to those writers, like something they could call “falling sickness.” That tradition is not a medical chart. It is a historical report filtered through time, politics, memory, and storytelling.

That means we don’t get to say, “Caesar definitely had epilepsy.”
But it also means we don’t get to wave it away as pure invention.
It sits in that awkward middle place: plausible, reported, not clinched.
And that awkward middle place is exactly where rumor lives.
Which, of course, is Shakespeare’s favorite territory.

3. The bigger question: why would anyone care about a leader’s health
Let’s ask the human question.
Why would a seizure story matter politically?

Because power is not only laws and armies. Power is confidence. Power is presence. Power is the public imagination saying, “That person is inevitable.”

A leader’s health becomes part of that imagination.

In a republic like Rome—especially a republic on the brink of becoming something else—the body of the leader is symbolically loaded. People ask: Is he strong? Is he steady? Is he favored by fortune? Is he cursed? Is he mortal like the rest of us, or is he turning into something larger than life?

Now add this: Rome is a world that reads signs. Comets, storms, strange births, odd behavior in animals, dreams, visions, warnings in sacrifices. It’s not that every Roman was superstitious in the same way—but the culture was saturated with interpretation.

So a sudden collapse is not merely a health event. It can become an omen. Or, more cynically, it can become a talking point.

And that takes us straight into Shakespeare’s play, because the play is obsessed with interpretation. People interpret Caesar. People interpret the crowd. People interpret each other’s motives. People interpret the weather. People interpret their own dreams.

So the “falling sickness” detail doesn’t sit in a medical chapter. It sits in a chapter about how people construct reality.

4. Shakespeare’s move: the report comes from a particular mouth
This is crucial.
Who mentions the falling sickness?
Not Caesar.
Not a doctor.
Not someone who cares about Caesar.
It comes through the mouth of someone with an agenda—someone who is already framing Caesar as unfit, unstable, theatrical, or dangerous.
So even if the underlying event happened, Shakespeare is still showing us the mechanism by which the event gets used.

This is not “a neutral health update.” This is political narration.
It’s one of Shakespeare’s great tricks: he gives you a fact-shaped object, but he hands it to you through a biased messenger, so you have to do the moral work of interpretation.
In other words: Shakespeare makes you part of the crowd.
Because that’s what crowds do. Crowds don’t receive information. Crowds receive stories.
And stories arrive already bent.

5. Two competing myths: Caesar the superhuman and Caesar the fragile man
Once you introduce a vulnerability into the image of a great leader, you get two myths battling each other.
Myth number one: Caesar is more than a man. He’s the colossus. He’s destiny. He’s the future.
Myth number two: Caesar is just a man. He’s subject to weakness. He’s subject to fear. He’s subject to collapse.
Now here’s what Shakespeare loves: both myths can be weaponized.
If you want to praise Caesar, you say, “Even with physical vulnerability, he towers over everyone.”
If you want to destroy Caesar, you say, “Look, he isn’t stable. He isn’t fit. He can be manipulated. He can be toppled.”
So the same reported event can serve opposite propaganda.
That’s not a bug in politics. That’s the whole system.

6. What might “falling sickness” have been, in modern terms
I’m going to be careful and responsible here.
Modern writers and physicians have proposed different possibilities, because the ancient descriptions are not detailed enough to be certain.
One possibility is epilepsy—some kind of seizure disorder.
Another possibility is syncope—fainting.
Another possibility is a cardiovascular or cerebrovascular issue—episodes like mini-strokes, transient ischemic attacks, or other sudden collapses that could be misinterpreted or described loosely by non-medical observers.
And there are other possibilities too.
But here’s the key point: the ancient writers did not have modern neurology. They had categories shaped by observation and cultural meaning.

So when an ancient biographer says “falling sickness,” it doesn’t map perfectly onto our categories.

We can say, “It could have been epilepsy,” and that is plausible.
We can also say, “It could have been something else,” and that is also plausible.

We have reports. They point in a direction. They are not conclusive. And Shakespeare uses the tradition for dramatic and political meaning.

That’s our responsible landing place.

7. The cruelty of “translation”: how illness becomes character assassination
Now I want to talk about something Shakespeare is quietly exposing.
When people hear about a leader’s illness, they often translate it. They turn it into a moral statement.
You can hear that translation in the way characters talk.
They don’t say: “He had an episode.”
They imply: “He’s weak.”
Or worse: “He’s unworthy.”
Or worse still: “He’s not a real man.”

This is one of the oldest cruelties in public life: turning a medical condition into a verdict on character.
And I want to say this plainly, because it matters—especially if any listener lives with epilepsy, or has a family member who does.
A seizure is not a moral event.
It’s not a sign of low intelligence.
It’s not proof of unreliability.
It’s not a verdict on worth.
And yet societies have repeatedly treated it that way, often because seizures look frightening to people who don’t understand them.
Shakespeare’s world inherited some of those fears, and Rome had its own.
So when “falling sickness” gets used as political language, it isn’t neutral.
It’s stigma.
And Shakespeare knows stigma is a weapon.


8. How Caesar’s health story fits the play’s obsession with performance
There’s another reason this detail is so potent in this play.
Julius Caesar is saturated with performance.
Public performance. Private performance. Men acting for crowds. Men acting for each other. Men acting for themselves.
Even sincerity becomes theatrical in this play.
So the moment of collapse—real or rumored—becomes part of a public script.
And what does the crowd see?
Not an EEG, not a medical evaluation, not a human being in private.
They see a narrative: “Caesar fainted.” “Caesar fell.” “Caesar is subject to fits.” “Caesar is not steady.”
And what does Caesar do in response?
The play suggests that leaders are forced to manage their bodies in public. They must either hide vulnerability, reframe it, or overpower it with performance.
In a world of politics, sometimes the body is forced to lie.
Or at least to pose.
That’s a chilling thought, and it still feels current.

9. The irony: the conspirators fear a weak man
Here’s one of the most Shakespearean ironies in the whole situation.
If Caesar is truly weak, if he is physically fragile, then why are the conspirators so terrified of him?
Why do they feel the need to murder him?
That question reveals something ugly about their moral logic.
They do not kill Caesar because he is weak.
They kill Caesar because he is powerful.
And then they use rumors of weakness to justify the killing.
That is the pattern we keep seeing in human life: justification arrives after desire.
First comes fear. First comes envy. First comes ambition.
Then comes the tidy story.
And illness—whether real or exaggerated—is an easy ingredient in that tidy story.
It sounds like compassion, but it functions as contempt.
It sounds like concern, but it functions as strategy.

And Shakespeare wants us to hear the difference.

10. Now let's look at this whole subject using the “three-layer method”
Layer one: the historical tradition.
“Some later ancient writers report Caesar had episodes called the falling sickness.”
Layer two: the uncertainty.
“We cannot diagnose it with certainty; the descriptions are not detailed enough.”
Layer three: Shakespeare’s purpose.
“In the play, the point is how a reported weakness becomes political language.”

That structure protects you from two traps:
Trap one: presenting rumor as medical fact.
Trap two: dismissing the tradition entirely.
It keeps you honest and keeps the focus on Shakespeare.

11. Why this matters for modern listeners
Now, why do I think this deserves a whole episode?
Because it’s not really about Caesar’s nerves or Caesar’s heart.
It’s about us.

It’s about how quickly    bodies into arguments.
It’s about how quickly we interpret someone’s health as a sign of worth, stability, or legitimacy.
It’s about how crowds behave when they are fed a story that feels like insider knowledge.

And it’s about the violence that can hide inside “reasonable language.”

Sources Include:  The Norton Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Essential Shakespeare Handbook, Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, The Globe Guide to Shakespeare, The Plays, The Productions, The Life, Shakesfear and How to Cure It, by Ralph Cohen, and ChatGPT four.

Thank you for listening to celebrate creativity and conversations with Shakespeare.