Messala
Messala is the play's dependable bearer of news and reliable witness — the officer whose reports carry weight precisely because he has no personal stake in distorting them. His grief at Cassius and Titinius gives the battle's aftermath a human register that the larger political drama might otherwise overrun.
Appears In
Biography
Messala is a Roman officer who serves alongside Brutus and Cassius in the republican cause, and one of the play's most reliable secondary intelligences — a man whose function is largely to deliver information and to witness things the audience needs witnessed by someone trustworthy. He appears first in Act IV, where his confirmation that Portia is dead — and his observation of Brutus's composed reception of the news — is one of the play's most debated moments: is Brutus's stoic response genuine philosophy or performance?
At Philippi he fights on the republican side, and it is Messala who discovers the bodies of both Titinius and Cassius after the catastrophe of the false report. His grief at the loss — particularly at Cassius, whom he calls 'the last of all the Romans' — gives the battle's aftermath its note of genuine mourning beneath the political reckoning.
He survives into the play's final movement, and the combination of his reliability as a reporter and his evident personal grief for the fallen makes him the play's most trustworthy minor voice at Philippi — the man in whose account of events the audience has the strongest reason to believe.
Motivation
Messala is motivated by loyalty to the republican cause and to the men who lead it. His function in the play is informational as much as dramatic — he is there to tell the truth about what has happened.
Personality
Messala is the play's most level-headed secondary figure in the battle sequences — a man whose steadiness makes the news he delivers land with full weight. His grief for Cassius is real and not performed, which is what gives his eulogy its force.