Caesar Assassinated: The Republic Dies With Him

A group of Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death on March 15, 44 BC, in the Theatre of Pompey, where the Senate was meeting while the Curia Julia was being rebuilt. Caesar had been warned repeatedly: a soothsayer had told him to 'beware the Ides of March,' and his wife Calpurnia had dreamed of his statue running with blood. Caesar ignored both warnings. The conspirators, numbering at least sixty senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, had convinced themselves that killing the dictator would restore the Roman Republic. Caesar was struck twenty-three times, though a physician later determined that only one wound, a thrust between the ribs, was fatal. The assassination achieved the opposite of its intended purpose: rather than restoring republican government, it triggered a series of civil wars that destroyed the Republic entirely and culminated in the establishment of the Roman Empire under Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian, who became Augustus.