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Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators on the Ides of March (15 March) of 44 BC during a meeting of the Senate at the Curia of Pompey of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome where the senators stabbed Caesar 23 times.
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- Caesar’s Assassination Unleashes a Brutal Fight for Power
- Augustus Establishes the Roman Empire
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Julius Caesar’s killers attempted to thwart a dictator. They inadvertently created an emperor.
By the time Julius Caesar stepped in front of the Roman Senate on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., the nearly 500-year-old Roman Republic had been ailing for years. Wealth inequality, political gridlock and civil wars had all weakened the republic in the century prior to Caesar’s ascension to power.
Caesar’s increasingly autocratic reign further threatened the republic. He bypassed the Senate on important matters, controlled the treasury and earned the personal loyalty of the republic’s army by pledging to give retiring soldiers property from public land or use his personal fortune to buy it himself, according to Edward Watts, author of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. He emblazoned his image on coins and reserved the right to accept or reject election results for lower offices. As Caesar transacted public business from a gold-and-ivory throne, rumors swirled that he would declare himself king.
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In the first weeks of 44 B.C., Caesar was proclaimed “dictator for life.” His life, though, wouldn’t last much longer.
Fearful that the concentration of absolute power in a single man threatened the republic’s democratic institutions, dozens of senators who called themselves the “Liberators” plotted to kill the dictator. On March 15 in 44 B.C., Caesar was stabbed 23 times by conspirators who believed themselves to be saviors of liberty and democracy. Instead, the daggers they thrust into Caesar dealt a fatal blow to the already wounded Roman Republic.
One of the assassination’s leading planners, Marcus Junius Brutus, had prepared to deliver a speech celebrating the Roman Republic’s restoration right after Caesar’s murder. He was shocked to find that outrage, rather than praise, greeted news of the dictator’s killing. If Caesar had been an autocrat, the lower and middle classes didn’t seem to mind as they benefitted from his radical reforms such as the cancellation of debts and adjustment of the tax code.
Instead of stabilizing the Roman Republic, the assassination plunged it into another civil war as Caesar’s supporters battled the assassins and then each other. Although former deputy Mark Antony positioned himself as Caesar’s rightful successor by delivering a powerful funeral oration, the slain ruler had pre-empted that outcome. In his will, Caesar had named his sickly, 18-year-old great-nephew Octavian as his primary heir and provided for his adoption.
Augustus Caesar
Having eliminated his rivals and seen the support given to Caesar by the masses, Octavian established absolute rule over the former republic and surpassed the power of his great-uncle. He approved of all candidates standing for election, while the powerless Senate rubber-stamped his decisions. By providing for soldiers’ retirements, he ensured their personal loyalty to him. Citizens in towns across Italy and the western Mediterranean were compelled to swear their personal loyalty to Octavian. Throughout Roman territories, coins, statues and even silverware bore his image.
The Senate in 27 B.C. bestowed the title “Augustus” upon Octavian, which according to Roman historian Cassius Dio signified “that he was more than human.” Augustus ruled as Rome’s first emperor—although he never took that title for himself. “He was a very shrewd politician," Strauss says. “He had a lot of tricks, and one of them was to pretend that what was happening wasn’t really happening. He said that he restored the republic and never used the terms dictator or king, instead calling himself Rome’s ‘first citizen.’”
When a crisis of flooding, famine and plague besieged Rome in 22 B.C., citizens did not agitate for a restoration of the republic, but instead locked up a group of senators and threatened to burn them alive if Augustus was not named dictator. They believed that Augustus alone could save them. The freedom they sought was one from war, hunger and chaos.
The Roman Empire is vividly brought to life through the lens of the Colosseum.
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Oct 19, 2024 · Julius Caesar was murdered in the Roman Senate House by a group of nobles on March 15, 44 BCE. The assassination plot was led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus . How did Julius Caesar come to power?
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Gaius Julius Caesar [a] (12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC.
Oct 20, 2024 · Shocked, Caesar attempted to defend himself, but the conspirators overwhelmed him. Each assassin stabbed him in a frenzy of violence. His bloodied body fell at the base of a statue of Pompey, a final, grim irony. By the end, Caesar had suffered twenty-three wounds, many delivered after he was already dead.
Sep 21, 2021 · On the Ides of March (15th of March), the conspirators lured Caesar to the Theatre of Pompey. After he arrived, one of the conspirators seized his toga and up to sixty assailants stabbed Caesar. Caesar later died because of blood loss.
Discover facts about the life of Julius Caesar - what led him to make himself dictator of Rome? This biography includes details of his romance with Cleopatra and his death.
