15. March -44
2070 years ago
The dictator who grew too powerful was struck down by his own senators — killing the republic the deed was meant to save.
In 44 BC, Julius Caesar stood at the summit of power. He had conquered Gaul, won the civil war and taken the title "dictator perpetuo" — dictator for life. To many in Rome it looked dangerously like a king, in a republic that despised kings.
Scroll to the Ides↓
On his way to the Senate, a soothsayer is said to have warned him: "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar laughed it off. But among the senators, some sixty men — including his trusted friend Brutus — had sworn to stop him.
On 15 March, the Ides, they gathered in the Senate hall by the Theatre of Pompey. Beneath their folded togas they hid daggers. As Caesar took his seat, they pressed around him on the pretext of presenting a petition.
Then came the first strike. The senators fell upon him, and Caesar was stabbed three and twenty times. When he saw Brutus among them, he is said to have whispered: "Et tu, Brute?" — "You too, Brutus?" — and drew his toga over his face.
The murder was meant to save the Republic, but did the opposite. It plunged Rome into fresh civil wars, and from the ashes rose Caesar's adopted son Augustus as the first Roman emperor. The Republic was dead; the Empire born.