15th March 44 B.C.
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.
10th January 49 BC
On this day the Roman general, Julius Caesar, at the end of his term as Governor of Gaul, led his army across the Rubicon river in the north east of Italy and headed for Rome. In so doing, he deliberately broke the Roman Republic Law which stated that a returning Roman general must disband his army before entering Italy. By breaking this law and marching into Italy at the head of his army, Caesar was effectively declaring himself an outlaw and laying the foundations for the ensuing civil war and ultimately for his own demise. Today the expression “crossing the Rubicon” has come to mean making an important and irreversible decision.
