The Ides of March: Caesar Falls, 44 BC
On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by Roman senators in the Curia of Pompey — an assassination meant to save the Republic that instead helped bury it.
He had been warned. A soothsayer told him to beware the Ides of March — the 15th of the month. His wife, Calpurnia, dreamed of disaster and begged him to stay home. On the morning of March 15, 44 BC, someone pressed a note into his hand warning of the plot, but he never read it. Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, walked into the Senate meeting at the Curia of Pompey anyway.
Caesar had just been named dictator perpetuo — dictator in perpetuity. To a group of senators, that was the final proof that he meant to bury the Roman Republic and rule as a king. At least 60 of them had joined a conspiracy, led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus — who had once served under Caesar in Gaul — and Gaius Trebonius.
The conspirators hid their daggers beneath their togas. Caesar was due to leave Rome on March 18 for a military campaign, and they would not let him go. Inside the hall, the signal came when Tillius Cimber stepped forward with a petition — a prearranged cue. Servilius Casca struck the first blow, and then they were all upon him. Caesar fought back at first, but when he saw Brutus — a man he had treated almost like a son — among the attackers, he stopped resisting. He was stabbed 23 times and fell dead at the foot of a statue of Pompey, his great rival. The Roman writer Suetonius records that his last words, spoken in Greek, were 'You too, my child?' The more famous 'Et tu, Brute?' is William Shakespeare's invention, written 1,600 years later.
The conspirators believed they were saving the Republic. Instead, they destroyed it. Rome plunged into civil war. Brutus and Cassius were defeated at Philippi in 42 BC and took their own lives; Brutus even issued coins celebrating the Ides of March. Caesar's will named his adopted heir, Octavian — later Augustus — and Mark Antony tried to carry out Caesar's legacy. But Antony and Octavian turned on each other, and Octavian emerged from the ruins as the first Roman emperor. The Republic the assassins claimed to love died with the man they killed.
Two thousand years on, the Ides of March still warns us: political violence, even in the name of liberty, rarely restores what its makers hope to save.
Photo: Jean-Léon Gérôme, public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).