The hostname is probably not just "brutus", but rather "brutus.something"
The .something needs to be at the top of /etc/hosts like so:
search something
nameserver <blah>
nameserver <blah2>
If you can get your DHCP server set up to be aware of the .something domain suffix, your dhcp client will typically add that to /etc/hosts automatically.
Having a static ip does not necessarily mean you don't want use dhcp. It's easier to manage all the dns and ip allocations in one place, where individual MAC addresses or hosts can be given (centrally managed) static ips, or can get their ip addresses from a dhcp pool. Then all your computers can use dhcp.
