On this day, the Ides of March, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by a group of senators during a meeting of the Senate at the Curia of Pompey. Caesar was at the height of his power, having been declared dictator perpetuo by the Senate, but a number of senators, led by Cassius Longinus and his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus, were afraid that the unprecedented concentration of power in one man’s hands was undermining the principles of the Roman Republic. Although Caesar had been warned about the Ides of March by a seer, and his wife had also foreseen his death in a dream, he allowed himself to be persuaded by one of the conspirators, the senator Decimus, to attend the meeting that would lead to his death and would plunge Rome into a bloody civil war.
Assassination of Julius Caesar
15th March 44 B.C.