Assassination of Julius Caesar
On the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BCE, Julius Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times by a group of approximately sixty senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus as he entered the Theatre of Pompey for a Senate meeting. The conspirators, calling themselves 'Liberatores,' believed they were restoring the Republic by removing a tyrant; Caesar had recently been named dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity), a title that openly implied monarchy in Roman eyes. Ironically, Caesar's murder destabilized rather than saved the Republic: the conspirators had no coherent plan for what followed, and the reading of his will — which left money to every Roman citizen and bequeathed his gardens as a public park — transformed public sentiment against them. The resulting power struggle between Antony, Octavian, and the Liberatores plunged Rome into another decade of civil war before Octavian's victory at Actium established the Principate.
- Category: Political
