17. The Assassination of Julius Caesar
When a faction of Roman Senators, styling themselves “The Liberators”, formed to plot the assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus eagerly accepted the invitation to join them. He was a great symbolic catch, because he was a descendant of Lucius Licinius Brutus, the Roman Republic’s founder who had chased the last king out of Rome. On the Ides of March, 44 BC, dozens of Senators suddenly fell upon Caesar during a meeting of the Senate.
Brutus stabbed the dictator in the groin, which contemporaries interpreted as a statement against his mother’s former lover, as well as against the rumors that Caesar might have actually been Brutus’ biological father. The assassins were pardoned by the Senate, but a riot soon thereafter forced them to flee Rome. The following year, Mark Antony and Caesar’s nephew and heir, Octavius, got that pardon revoked, and had the Senate declare the dictator’s assassins murderers. Civil war erupted again, and ended with the assassins defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. Brutus committed suicide, to avoid falling into Octavius’ clutches.
