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On the night before Julius Caesar’s assassination, his wife dreamed that the foundation of their house fell down and her husband was stabbed in her arms. Those who opposed Rome having a monarch and wanted Rome to return to a Republic were called Liberators and began plotting Caesar’s death. Julius Caesar had declared himself “dictator for life” in 45 BC.

His baldness gave him much uneasiness…he used to brush forward the hair from the crown of his head, and of all the honors conferred on him by the Senate and People, there was none which he either accepted or used with greater pleasure than the right of constantly wearing a laurel crown.” Lives Of The Caesars: Julius Caesar 45

Caesar death full#

Suetonius (70-130 AD) gives the only physical description of Caesar: “He was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather full faced, with eyes black and piercing….kept the hair of his head closely cut and had his face smoothly shaved. It hangs in Baltimore’s Walters Art Gallery.Ancient Accounts Of The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: On The Ides (15th) March 44 BC Julius Caesar declared himself “dictator for life” in 45 BC The Death of Caesar, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, was painted for the Exposition Universelle of 1867, held in Paris. Augustus declared his predecessor a god – Divus Iulius – the same year. Civil war followed and the conspirators, led by Cassius and Brutus, were defeated at the Battle of Philippi in Macedonia in 42 BC by forces under the command of Mark Antony and Caesar’s nominated successor, Gaius Octavius, who became the Emperor Augustus Caesar. The conspirators headed for the Capitol but were met by a bewildered, fearful crowd, who began a destructive fire. He did not say the Shakespearean ‘Et tu, Brute’, but he may have uttered, as the Roman chronicler Suetonius claimed, ‘You too, child’. His last words have been subject to centuries of speculation.

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Blinded by the torrent of blood that poured from his wounds, Caesar fell on the steps of the Curia. As Caesar cried ‘this is violence’, Casca thrust a dagger at his neck – and then the mob struck. When Caesar refused, Cimber manhandled Caesar, pulling down his toga. On his arrival, Caesar was presented with a petition by Lucius Tillius Cimber for the return of his exiled brother. His ally Mark Antony, similarly suspicious, tried to intervene, but he was detained outside the theatre by the plotter Servilius Casca.

Caesar had been warned of various plots on his life, but Brutus persuaded him that the Senate would be disappointed if he did not attend.

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The setting for Caesar’s assassination was to be the Theatre of Pompey, where Brutus had organised a series of gladiatorial contests, to which he had invited the dictator. If action was to be taken by the conspirators, now was the moment. Senators, of whom Cassius and Brutus were most prominent, had formed themselves into a grouping, the Liberatores, in an attempt to restore the Republic.Ĭaesar had recently announced his impending departure on a military campaign to subdue the Parthian Empire. A huddle of conspirators walks away from the lifeless, bloodied body of Julius Caesar, having stabbed the great Roman general and statesman 23 times on the Ides, or 15th, of March, 44 BC.Ĭaesar had recently been declared dictator perpetuo by a Senate fearful of its rumoured abolition in a series of reforms by Caesar, who had a substantial following among Rome’s Plebeians.