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He had been warned.
His wife wanted to have seen bloody visions in a dream.
A seer recognized misfortune.
A passerby gave him a warning on the way.
He himself was plagued by malaise (probably as a result of a hangover), so that it was difficult to persuade him to attend the session of the Senate on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 BC.
To attend.
But in the end, the dictator Gaius Julius Caesar let go of all caution and allowed himself to be carried in his litter to the conference room in Pompey's curia.
There the conspirators' daggers felled him.
The murder of Caesar is one of the great turning points in history.
Until its victories in the civil war, the Roman Republic had functioned to some extent despite all the conflicts and crises.
After his death and an even bloodier civil war, there was only one solution: the rule of one man, the emperor.
It was not like that: the conspirators did not storm out of the Curia as triumphant victors, but fled almost headlessly
Source: Universal Images Group via Getty
How the Ides of March came about and what effect they unfolded is the subject of a new “Terra X” series in which presenter Mirko Drotschmann wants to shed light on famous “moments in history”.
The first episode is about the most famous assassination in history.
Why did Caesar ignore the dangers, and why did the conspirators do the same?
Because what Caesar's biographer Suetonius recognized soon became true: "None of his murderers survived him longer than three years, and none died of natural causes."
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In October 45 BC
Caesar was at the height of his power.
After the conquest of Gaul (58-50) he had 49 BC.
Started a civil war that shook the whole Mediterranean world.
In 45 he defeated the last army of his opponents at Munda in Spain.
Thereupon he celebrated an unusual triumph in Rome, not only, as had been the custom for centuries, over a foreign enemy, but also over Roman citizens who had been massacred by the tens of thousands.
The Senate, the assembly of aristocrats who had passed the political office, showered him with honors and titles.
The most important was that of the dictator for life.
This made Caesar the all-important authority in the republic, which ceased to be a forum for the interplay of noble interests.
The Senate not only lost all design options, but also changed in its composition as Caesar increased the number of its members from 600 to 900.
Most of the new appointments were his unconditional supporters.
Caesar relied on reason and propaganda.
Because he had the largest war machine in the world, any resistance was hopeless.
But the dictator also realized that without his steadfast hand, the empire would plunge again into a civil war for which not only soldiers and ordinary citizens, but also many aristocrats would pay with their lives.
Assured that the senators would recognize this, Caesar had disbanded his bodyguards on his return to Rome.
Gaius Iulius Caesar (100–44), dictator for life
Source: picture alliance / Heritage Imag
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With donations of money and lavish games, he drew the people of Rome to his side, and with his portrait on coins he made himself known throughout the empire (and broke with the tradition that the living were not depicted on coins), like the ancient historian Babett Edelmann-Singer executes.
And with a war against the Parthians he wanted to iron out the severe defeat of his former partner Crassus, who had lost his army and life at Carrhae in 53.
Since the departure for the army was planned for March 18, the conspirators only had the Senate meeting on the Ides to carry out the assassination attempt.
Many of the 60 or so conspirators owed Caesar a lot, some of them their lives.
Because men like Gaius Cassius Longinus, who had fought against him in the civil war, had subsequently been accepted again with grace.
But they had to realize that after Caesar's triumph, the political opportunities for which they basically lived were forever taken from them.
The competition for reputation, offices and benefices, which had made the elite of the city-state of Rome rulers of a world empire, was undone.
Most of the conspirators owed their position to Caesar, some even their lives
Source: picture alliance / akg-images
Although the past civil war had shown the bloody dimensions in which this struggle was now being fought, many Roman aristocrats could not and would not abandon the vision of a republic in which they were free to take part in the game for power.
According to the historian Martin Jehne, they countered the core of Caesar's argument that this would lead to chaos, with the caricature of a golden past.
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Marcus Junius Brutus became the metaphor for this old republic.
One of his ancestors is said to have been involved in the elimination of the hated royal rule in Rome 500 years earlier.
Therefore, many conspirators made it a point that he should lead the attack.
The strings in the background, however, were drawn by Cassius and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, until then a leading follower of Caesar.
Its self-confidence made it easy for them.
Not only did he renounce his guard.
Caesar had his own forum built next to the Roman Forum, which literally overshadowed the buildings with the old institutions of the republic.
His mistress, the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, resided in a palace across the Tiber and gave Rome's aristocrats an idea of how the god kings of the Hellenistic East staged their rule.
To hatred came naivety.
The conspirators wanted to legitimize their attack as classic tyrannicide.
This meant that the leaders of the Caesarians, especially the incumbent consul Mark Antony, should be kept alive.
While one of the initiates engaged and distracted him in conversation before the meeting, the others surrounded the dictator and killed him with their daggers.
The man who was fatally wounded was man enough to cover his face with the toga.
The assassins dreamed of a classic tyrannicide (re-enactment scene)
Source: ZDF and Simon Varsano
It was immediately apparent that the murder did not renew the republic.
Instead of celebrating their triumph, the senators fled.
While Antony, as an experienced general, secured the support of the legions loyal to Caesar, the conspirators soon had to fear for their lives.
Caesar's great-nephew and heir Octavian would emerge victorious from the civil wars that followed.
He founded the principate, the rule of one man, who no longer ruled the empire as an omnipotent dictator, but behind the facades of the old republic.
Terra X: “A moment in history: 'Caesar's murder'”, ZDF, December 6, 2020, 7.30 p.m.
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