User:Ifly6/Julius Caesar

Assassination

The Green Caesar, posthumous portrait from the 1st century AD, now located at the Altes Museum in Berlin.

Dictatorships and honours

Prior to Caesar's assumption of the title dictator perpetuo in February 44 BC, he had been appointed dictator some four times since his first dictatorship in 49 BC, to hold elections, shortly after he took the city. During that dictatorship he did little and resigned after 11 days. The other dictatorships lasted for longer periods, up to a year, and by April 46 he was given a new dictatorship annually. The task he was assigned revived that of the Sulla's dictatorship: rei publicae constituendae. These appointments, however, were not the source of legal power themselves; in the eyes of the literary sources, they were instead honours and titles which reflected Caesar's dominant position in the state, secured not by operation of law but by personal status as victor over other Romans.

Through the period after Pharsalus, the senate showered Caesar with honours, including the title praefectus moribus (lit. 'prefect of morals') which historically was associated with the censorial power to revise the senate rolls. He was also granted power over war and peace, usurping a power traditionally held by the comitia centuriata. These powers attached to Caesar personally without regard to office. Similarly extraordinary were a number of symbolic honours which saw Caesar's image put onto Roman coinage – the first for a living Roman – with special rights to wear royal dress, sit atop a golden chair in the senate, and have his statues erected in public temples. The month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed Julius (now July). These were symbols of divine monarchy and, later, objects of resentment.

The decisions on the normal operation of the state – justice, legislation, administration, and public works – were concentrated into Caesar's person without regard for or even notice given to the traditional institutions of the republic. Caesar's domination over public affairs and his competitive instinct to preclude all others alienated the political class and led eventually to the conspiracy against his life.

Legislation and reforms

Caesar, as far as is attested in evidence, did not intend to restructure Roman society. Ernst Badian, writing in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, noted that although Caesar did implement a series of reforms, they did not touch on the core of the republican system: he "had no plans for basic social and constitutional reform" and that "the extraordinary honours heaped upon him... merely grafted him as an ill-fitting head on to the body of the traditional structure".

The most important of Caesar's reforms was to the calendar, which saw the abolition of the traditional republican lunisolar calendar and its replacement with a solar calendar now called the Julian calendar. He also increased the number of magistrates and senators (from 600 to 900) to better administer the empire and reward his supporters with offices. Colonies also were founded outside Italy – notably on the sites of Carthage and Corinth, which had both been destroyed during Rome's 2nd century BC conquests, – to discharge Italy's population into the provinces and reduce unrest. The royal power of naming patricians was revived to benefit the families of his men and the permanent courts jury pools were also altered to remove the tribuni aerarii, leaving only the equestrians and senators.

He also took further administrative actions to stabilise his rule and that of the state. Caesar reduced the size of the grain dole from 320,000 down to around 150,000 by revising the qualifications; special bonus were offered to families with many children to stall depopulation. Plans were drawn for the conduct of a census. Citizenship was extended to a number of communities in Cisalpine Gaul and Cádiz. During the civil wars, Caesar instituted a novel debt repayment programme (no debts would be forgiven but they could be paid in kind), rents were remitted with a cap, and games were thrown regularly distributing food. Many of his enemies during the civil wars were pardoned – Caesar's clemency was exalted in his propaganda and temple works – with the intent to cultivate gratitude and draw a contrast between himself and the vengeful dictatorship of Sulla.

The building programmes, started prior to his expedition to Spain, continued, with the construction of the Forum of Caesar and the Temple of Venus Genetrix therein. Other public works, including an expansion of Ostia's port and a canal through the Corinthian Isthmus, were also planned.

The collegia, civic associations, restored by Clodius in 58 BC were again abolished. His attempts to reward his supporters saw him allow his subordinates illegal triumphal processions and resign the consulship on the last day of the year so allies could be elected as suffect consuls for a single day. Corruption on the part of his partisans was also overlooked to ensure their support; provincial cities and client kingdoms were extorted for favours to pay his bills.

Conspiracy and assassination

Denarius (42 BC) of Cassius and Lentulus Spinther, depicting the crowned head of Liberty and on the reverse a sacrificial jug and lituus.

An 1867 depiction of the death of Caesar, from The Death of Caesar, Jean-Léon Gérôme

Attempts in January 44 BC to call Caesar rex (lit. 'king') – a title associated with arbitrary oppression against citizens – were shut down by two tribunes before a supportive crowd. Caesar had the two tribunes deposed from office and ejected from the senate. The incident both undermined Caesar's original arguments for pursuing the civil war (protecting the tribunes) and angered the public who still revered the tribunes and their sacrosanctity. Shortly before 15 February 44 BC, he assumed the dictatorship for life, putting an end to any hopes that his powers would be merely temporary. Just days after his assumption of the life dictatorship, he publicly rejected a diadem from Antony. Interpretations of the episode vary: he may have been rejecting the diadem publicly only because the crowd was insufficiently supportive; he could have done it performatively to signal he was no monarch; alternatively Antony could have acted on his own initiative. By this point, however, rumour was rife that Caesar – already wearing the dress of a monarch – sought a formal crown and the episode did little to reassure.

The plan to assassinate Caesar had started by the summer of 45 BC. An attempt Antony was made around that time, though he declined and gave Caesar no warning. By February 44 BC, there were some sixty conspirators. It is clear that by this time, the victorious Caesarian coalition from the civil war had broken apart. While most of the conspirators were former Pompeians, they were joined by a substantial number of Caesarians. Among their leaders were Gaius Trebonius (consul in 45), Decimus Brutus (consul designate for 42), as well as Cassius and Brutus who were both praetors in 44 BC. Trebonius and Decimus had joined Caesar during the war; Brutus and Cassius had joined Pompey; other Caesarians included Servius Sulpicius Galba, Lucius Minucius Basilus, Lucius Tullius Cimber, and Gaius Servilius Casca. Many of the conspirators would have been candidates in the consular elections for 43 to 41 BC. The sham elections in early 44 BC with advance results for the years 43–41 BC came from the grace of the dictator and not that of the people; this was no substitute for actual electoral victory. Popular indignation is observed, for example, with write-in votes for the deposed tribunes from earlier in the year instead of Caesar's candidates who were likely the only men allowed to stand for office. Nor is it likely that the subordination of the normal magistrates to Caesar's masters of the horse was appreciated.

Brutus, who claimed descent from the Lucius Junius Brutus who had driven out the kings and the Gaius Servilius Ahala who had freed Rome from incipient tyranny, was the main leader of the conspiracy. By late autumn 45 BC, graffiti and some public comments at Rome was condemning Caesar as a tyrant and insinuating the need for a Brutus to remove the dictator. The ancient sources, excepting Nicolaus of Damascus, are unanimous that this reflected a genuine turn in public opinion against Caesar. Popular indignation at Caesar was likely rooted in his debt policies (too friendly to lenders), use of lethal force to suppress protests for debt relief, his reduction in the grain dole, his abolition of the collegia restored by Clodius, his abolition of the poorest panel of jurors in the permanent courts, and his abolition of open elections which deprived the people of their ancient right of decision. Whether there was a tradition of tyrannicide at Rome is unclear: Cicero wrote in private as if the duty to kill tyrants was already given; he, however, made no public speeches to that effect and there is little evidence that the public accepted the logic of preventive tyrannicide. The philosophical tradition of the Platonic Old Academy was also a factor driving Brutus to action due to its emphasis on a duty to free the state from tyranny.

While some news of the conspiracy did leak out, Caesar refused to take precautions and rejected adding a bodyguard. The date decided upon by the conspirators was 15 March, the Ides of March, three days before Caesar intended to leave for his Parthian campaign. News of his imminent departure forced the conspirators to move up their plans; the senate meeting on the 15th would be the last before his departure. They had decided that a senate meeting was the best place to frame the killing as political, rejecting the alternatives at games, elections, or on the road. That only the conspirators would be armed at the senate meeting, per Dio, also would have been an advantage. The day, 15 March, was also symbolically important as it was the day on which consuls took office until the mid-2nd century BC.

Various stories purport that he was on the cusp of not attending or otherwise warned about the plot. Approached on his golden chair at the foot of the statue of Pompey, the conspirators attacked him with daggers. Whether he fell in silence, per Suetonius, or after reply to Brutus' appearance – kai su teknon? ("you too, child?") – is variantly recorded. Between twenty-three and thirty-five wounds later, the dictator-for-life was dead.

Aftermath of the assassination

Further information: War of Mutina, Second Triumvirate, and Liberators' civil war

Marc Antony's Oration at Caesar's Funeral by George Edward Robertson (late 19th or early 20th century).

The assassins seized the Capitoline hill after killing the dictator. They then summoned a public meeting in the Forum where they were coldly received by the population. They were also unable to fully secure the city, as Lepidus – Caesar's lieutenant in the dictatorship – moved troops into the city. Antony, the consul who escaped the assassination, urged an illogical compromise position in the senate: Caesar was not declared a tyrant and the conspirators were not punished.

Caesar's funeral was then approved. At the funeral, Antony inflamed the public against the assassins, which triggered mob violence that lasted for some months before the assassins were forced to flee the capital and Antony then finally acted to suppress it by force. On the site of his cremation, the Temple of Caesar was begun by the triumvirs in 42 BC at the east side of the main square of the Roman Forum. Only its altar now remains. The terms of the will were also read to the public: it gave a generous donative to the plebs at large and left as principal heir one Gaius Octavius, Caesar's great-nephew then at Apollonia, and adopted him in the will.

Resumption of the pre-existing republic proved impossible as various actors appealed in the aftermath of Caesar's death to liberty or to vengeance to mobilise huge armies that led to a series of civil wars. The first war was between Antony in 43 BC and the senate (both Caesarians and former Pompeians) which resulted in Octavian – Caesar's heir – exploiting the chaos to seize the consulship and join with Antony and Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate. After purging their political enemies in a series of proscriptions, the triumvirs secured the deification of Caesar – the senate declared on 1 January 42 BC that Caesar would be placed among the Roman gods – and marched on the east where a second war saw the triumvirs defeat the tyrannicides in battle, resulting in a final death of the republican cause and three-way division of much of the Roman world.