Et tu, Brute?: The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination

Gaius Julius Caesar, life dictator of Rome, not quite a king and not yet a god, was murdered on the 15th of March-the Ides of March-in 44 BC. The killers were a conspiracy of senators that included the leading politicians and intellectuals of their day. Citing the best of motives, they committed the wrost of crimes, to save the city. In vain. Within months the leaders of the conspiracy were fleeing for their lives, and Rome plunged into a decade and a half of bloody civil war. Why should we care about the Ides of March? Because Caesar's vast ghost long outlasted the Roman empire, in titles and ceremonies, on stage and in fiction, in opera and popular culture. Because his dealth is a fulcrum in the history of political murder. Killing Caesar became, after Julius' death, an almost routine remedy for the ills of the Roman state. And most of all because when, in later ages, men once more contemplated tyrannicide, they returned again and again to Brutus's crime and Caesar's murder. Assassination and autocracy remain indissolubly linked, as they will until kings and presidents themselves lose power and significance. And western democracies, like noble Brutus, plot the murder of Third World dictators as a remedy for terrorism. Beware the Ides of March!