7. “Et Tu, Brute?“
Cesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, after which Marcus Junius Brutus surrendered, and was pardoned and restored to favor. Brutus’ resentment against the dictator and his mother’s lover remained, however. When a faction of Roman Senators formed to do Caesar in, Brutus eagerly accepted their invitation to join their secret group, which styled itself “The Liberators”. Brutus was a great symbolic catch because he was a descendant of Lucius Licinius Brutus, the Roman Republic’s founder who had chased out Rome’s last king.
On the Ides of March in 44 BC, Brutus stabbed Caesar in his assassination that day. The assassins were pardoned by the Senate, but a riot soon thereafter forced Brutus and his coconspirators to flee Rome. The next year, Mark Antony and Caesar’s nephew and heir, Octavian, got that amnesty revoked, and had the Senate declare Caesar’s assassins murderers. Civil war erupted again, and ended with the assassins’ defeat at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, after which Brutus committed suicide rather than fall into Octavian’s clutches.
