Julius Caesar is Assassinated

March 15, 44 B.C.

Today 2068 years ago, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death during a meeting by a group of senators who called themselves “liberatores” (liberators). The assassination was led, among others, by Brutus, whom some historians consider to possibly be Caesar’s biological son, as Caesar had a love affair with his mother, but other historians discount this possibility. Up to several dozen senators were part of the assassination plot, and though there was a diverse range of motivations among the participants, the professed aim of the group was to save the Roman Republic from what they saw as Caesar’s ambition to become king.

The concerns of the group were not unfounded: after a successful military campaign in which Caesar conquered Gaul (largely corresponding to present-day France), thereby greatly enlarging Roman territory, he had defied a demand of the senators to disband his army and return to Rome as a civilian, instead provoking what has come be known as “Caesar’s civil war”. The expression “crossing the Rubicon”, which denotes passing a point of no return, originates from Caesar’s very action that started the civil war. After coming out of it victoriously, Caesar had himself appointed “dictator in perpetuity” and may have given other indications that he was losing respect for the senate and wanted to become monarch.

The assassination took place on what in the Roman calendar is called a the Ides of March, a sacred day they associated with settling debts, but in the end it failed to prevent the demise of the Roman Republic and may have even been a catalyst for the rise of the Roman empire. A war between the liberatores and those loyal to Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian, would eventually lead the latter to be crowned as the Roman Emperor Augustus, initiating an empire that would last for five centuries.