Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
— Mark Antony, Julius Caesar · William Shakespeare
Friends, Romans, fellow citizens — listen to me for a moment.
Antony opens a funeral speech that will turn a whole crowd against the assassins — while claiming he has come only to bury Caesar, not to praise him. It is a masterclass in rhetoric: irony, repetition, and false modesty used to move a mob.