Julius Caesar

Assassinated on the Ides of March 44 BCE in Rome by a conspiracy of some sixty senators led by Brutus and Cassius; the murder ignited civil war rather than restoring the Republic.

Overview

Caesar had conquered Gaul, defeated Pompey in the civil war, and concentrated power in himself as dictator perpetuo, king in all but name. Senators calling themselves liberators, led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, stabbed him at a senate meeting in the Theater of Pompey. According to tradition he died at the base of Pompey statue with twenty-three wounds. The conspirators expected gratitude but the funeral oration of Antony and the mob anger it stirred forced them to flee Italy. Antony and Caesar heir Octavian fought the assassins at Philippi in 42 BCE, where Brutus and Cassius died by suicide. The assassins killed the Republic they claimed to save: thirteen years of civil war ended with Augustus and the Empire.