Songfacts®:

• Frontman Anthony Kiedis said in a video that this was the final song penned for I'm With You. The band was already in the recording studio laying down the album when bassist Flea played a piece on the piano that the Chili Peppers felt they needed to turn into a song.
• The song title refers to the death of the Roman statesman Julius Caesar, who was assassinated by a republican group on the Ides of March (the 15th) at the senate house. 60 people were involved in the plot, including Brutus, whom Caesar believed to have been his illegitimate son, as his mother Servilia had been Caesar's lover during their youth. According to Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, the dictator cried "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", commonly rendered as "Even You, Brutus?"), when he saw Brutus among the conspirators. Caesar's last words are not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians alike. Some contemporaries claimed Caesar's last words were "You too, child?" However both Suetonius and Plutarch say Caesar said nothing, with the latter also reporting that Caesar pulled his toga over his head when he spotted Brutus.