Real Dictators - Julius Caesar Part 3: Murder in the Senate

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Caesar departs Egypt with his lover, Cleopatra, secure on the throne. After crushing Pompey’s allies, he returns to Rome. His rule proves popular with the masses. But senators grow concerned by his increasing megalomania. With the Ides of March approaching, conspirators hatch an historic assassination plot… A Noiser production, written by Jeff Dawson. This is Part 3 of 3. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. It's October, 48 BC. Nighttime. In his room, in the palace of King Ptolemy XIII, child ruler of Egypt, Julius Caesar sits alone. Caesar is in a bit of a bind.

On defeating his great rival Pompey on the plains of Pharsalus, the Roman civil war has effectively been won. In pursuing Pompey to Alexandria, it seemed possible that Caesar could stage peace talks and restore order to the Roman world. But everything has been thrown up in the air. On arrival, Caesar had been presented with a gruesome gift, Pompey's severed head. It was intended as a token of Ptolemy's loyalty. But the casual slaughter of this great Roman general, a man once part of his own family, has sickened Caesar to his stomach. Hold up in Ptolemy's palace now,

he must maintain a facade of cordiality. For Caesar is not out of the woods yet. He knows that he is being used, manipulated, by the boy king's chief advisor, the scheming eunuch, Pothinus. Caesar and his men have walked slap-bang into trouble, a power struggle between Ptolemy and his older sister, the queen. They're meant to rule as a couple, quite literally as husband and wife, but each is now vying for sole control of Egypt. If Ptolemy thinks he has Caesar in his pocket, he's mistaken. For the queen also wishes to win Caesar's favor. Her problem is that she's been unable to gain access to him. There's a knock at Caesar's bedchamber.

In enters a strapping slave. His name is Apollodorus, and he carries over his shoulder a laundry sack, and some versions of the story, a rolled carpet. Either way, he's smuggled it right into Ptolemy's household, hiding in plain sight. As he pulls the drawstring and the cloth falls, Caesar beholds a young woman standing before him, glammed to the nines. She is Queen of Egypt, Ptolemy's sister, Ptolemy's rival.

She's twenty years old. Her name is Cleopatra. Caesar's judgment is about to go right out of the window. He is utterly smitten. This is the final part of the Julius Caesar story. And this is Real Dictators. The Egypt of Cleopatra is one far removed from the fabled land of the pharaohs. Two thousand years on from the peak of ancient Egyptian civilization,

Cleopatra exists closer to us in the present day than she does to the building of the pyramids. Egypt remains a powerful kingdom nonetheless. The fertile Nile Delta yields abundant agricultural produce. Its port capital is fabulously wealthy. Alexandria, as its name implies, was founded by Alexander the Great. After his death, as his empire fell apart, it was taken over by one of his generals, Ptolemy. A dynasty was established. The Ptolemies have been ruling Egypt for 300 years.

Professor Amy Russell. Egypt is really, really interesting because you've got different ethnic groups who've reached some form of uneasy alliance. And the monarchy is trying to balance the needs of the people of Alexandria. A large majority think of themselves as Macedonian and then indigenous Egyptians. Also a very large Jewish population in Alexandria. There seems to be a lot of ethnic tension and whoever's going to be in charge of Egypt needs to know how they're dealing with all of those things.

Ptolemy XIII, via his advisor Pothinus, has shut out Cleopatra VII in favour of a half-sister, Arsinoe. Whether Cleopatra is the great beauty that history proclaims, who knows? Plutarch does commend both her striking looks and her abundant charms. She's also clearly aware of Caesar's weakness when it comes to the ladies. Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy. Cleopatra is one of those famous names for antiquity

that still has immediate recognition. And there aren't too many of those, especially these days. And of course, she's Caesar's lover, one of many. She's the most famous. The story is such a good one in that you have her, you know, being smuggled into the palace where he's staying when he's arrived, you know, let out of the laundry bags, popping up like a dancer coming out of a cake. At 52, Caesar is more than 30 years Cleopatra's senior. But so beguiled is he that he throws in his lot with her immediately. Soon he's ensconced in her palace, with Ptolemy's army bearing down on them. Professor David Gwynne.

Cleopatra is clearly very intelligent, very ambitious, and has worked out that here's a counterweight to her brother. And if she works with Caesar and Caesar can eliminate her brother, she will take control of Egypt. Professor Neville Morley. Caesar starts as a kind of mediator and tries to bring them together. But Ptolemy's advisors feel that what's being proposed is much too favourable to Cleopatra. Ptolemy decides this is not the way he wants to go, so he besieges the two of them in the palace. As ever, Caesar's small but battle-hardened army proves its worth.

Supplemented by reinforcements, the Romans eventually engage Ptolemy's men in a naval battle. The young king drowns when trying to flee. Caesar appoints Cleopatra queen alongside an even younger brother, 11-year-old Ptolemy XIV. In effect, she will rule alone. Everybody's happy, except Pothinus the eunuch, who finds himself on the sharp end of a revenge execution, promptly beheaded. Caesar has been scrapping his way around the Mediterranean for most of his adult life. He's battle-scarred, burnt out, balding. But he now has a trophy girlfriend to take his

mind off things. The fact that Caesar is still married to Calpurnia seems but a minor detail. When Caesar and Cleopatra meet, he's at the time in de facto control of a lot of Rome's resources, and Rome is very much the superpower. But she's the last one standing of the other monarchs, of the other powers. She has a huge amount that she's bringing to the table here. Despite the mutual convenience of their affair, the couple seem a genuine match.

They get on incredibly well. Soon, Cleopatra will be pregnant with a son that she will call, unambiguously, Caesarian. And so Caesar and Cleopatra do what anyone else would in this situation. They go on a cruise down the Nile. He sort of takes a holiday, you know, and goes off with Cleopatra because this is pleasant. I can relax. I can switch off and I can talk to someone who is interesting, who is as well-educated as anybody in the Greek world could be. And remember, Romans like Caesar are fluently bilingual and have a deep inferiority complex about the Greek world.

And Cleopatra of Alexandria epitomizes all that is best about the Greeks. And she's an attractive, intelligent, lively, vivacious lover as well. So, you know, what more do you want in your 50s? They've been away for a month, halfway to Ethiopia, when reality pricks the romantic bubble. It's now the summer of 47 BC. Caesar's lieutenants and the supporting armada gently nudge their boss. It's time to go home.

Back in Rome, things have been left in the care of Mark Antony. Antony is not the only one growing frustrated with Caesar's long absence. Caesar's antics have been greeted as a scandal. Less to do with his adultery, more that he's been consorting with a foreigner and a royal. That he intends to bring Cleopatra to Rome ruffles more feathers. As it happens, Caesar will not head back immediately. But there is more unfinished business. He eventually stops canoodling and going on scenic tours of the Nile

and starts on the mopping up operation. So there are still some allies of Pompey round the place. In Asia Minor, another king, Pharnaces, has taken advantage of the chaos of the Roman Civil War. He is attempting to grab some lost territory around the Black Sea. Caesar marches in and, without breaking a sweat, defeats Pharnaces at the Battle of Zella. His dismissive quip, veini vidi vici, I came, I saw, I conquered, will be a Caesarism for the

ages, a catchphrase for his men who will carry the slogan on placards on their triumphal entry into Rome. In September 47 BC, when Caesar returns, it has been a full twenty months since he set off in pursuit of Pompey. For six months of that, during the siege of Alexandria, he was completely incommunicado. He is Rome's official and appointed dictator. This is no way to govern a country. As ever, Caesar silences his critics with his populist touch. He secures land in Gaul to settle 80,000 of his veterans.

In Rome itself, he instigates grand engineering works, draining the marshland to stop the persistent flooding. And then there's his pet project, his living memorial, engineering works, draining the marshland to stop the persistent flooding. And then there's his pet project, his living memorial, his brand new forum. Building technology is changing. So this is the time that Romans are first starting to use concrete. And the great thing about concrete is that you can build something very large, very fast. So much faster than having to hew it all out of stone.

Pompey has built his own gigantic theatre, a gift to the Roman people. Caesar has to compete with that. He's going to build a political building, the new Forum, the Forum Iulium. So you can see how it's a very dictatorly move to say, well, actually, I'm going to build a new one and it's going to be named after me. It's not just named after him. It's absolutely dominated by a temple of Venus Genetrix. Genetrix means parent or ancestor. Pompey, on his theater, had built a temple to Venus Victrix, Venus the victor. So he's claiming a special relationship with Venus, who apparently blessed him with his victories. Caesar one-ups him on that because he has this family legend that the Julia descended from Venus, right?

So Venus isn't just, you know, the goddess who helps him to victory. She's his great-grandma. And he puts it in a position to, you know, loom over this new political space, this new forum that he's building. So this is right in the centre of Rome. He has to spend huge amounts of money buying up prime real estate, knocking down fantastic houses and knocking down the Senate building to build his own one that he's going to name after himself. It's a big dog move. It's a very, oh God, what a horrific pun, it's a very concrete assertion of his power. For all the criticism of Caesar, there is one thing in his favour. He is not Mark Antony.

Over the months, Mark Antony has gone off the rails. Already a notorious drinker, he's now a full-on inebriate, prone to throwing up in the Senate. He is also taken to parading around Rome in a chariot pulled by a team of lions. He has a train of famous actresses in tow, and he likes dressing up as Hercules. The likes of old foe Cicero have been forgiven and embraced, but Caesar's die-hard opponents are once again scheming. Cato has sailed to North Africa with a bunch of Pompey loyalists. They have teamed up with the Numidian ruler, King Juba. Rumors sweep Rome that they will return to oust Caesar. Once again, Caesar dons his breastplate. On December 25th, 47 BC, he sets sail,

inadvisably crossing the Mediterranean in winter seas. Arriving in what is modern-day Tunisia, his ships have been scattered. And an ill omen. As Caesar wades ashore, he falls flat on his face. With presence of mind, he grabs two handfuls of sand and declares, I have hold of you, Africa, which prompts great merriment and relief among his men. His army fights its way to Utica, the old Carthaginian city. There Cato is dug in. In protest, he's not cut his hair or shaved since

Caesar crossed the Rubicon. But Cato knows which way the wind is blowing. That night, while Caesar's men besiege him, he sits in his bedroom reading Plato, before taking his sword and stabbing himself in the stomach. Not quite dead, he is discovered by his son. He helps him to a doctor who patches him up. But so determined to end his own life is Cato, that he rips open his stitches and pulls out his own guts. Better than surrender to Caesar, or worse, to be treated with mercy.

In celebration of his victory, Caesar has a fling with Juno, wife of Bogut, king of the Moors. Veni vidi vici. After six months away again in July 46 BC, Caesar is back in Rome. Delayed by conflict, he's not yet had a chance to mark his triumph in the Gallic Wars, let alone Spain, Egypt, Asia Minor and North Africa. If there's one thing this dictator knows, it's how to host a do. Caesar throws himself a 40-day Thanksgiving. The toga party to end all toga parties. Tactfully, his defeat of Cato is remarketed as the victory over King Juba. As part of the parade, Juba's infant son, as well as Egyptian princess Arsinoe,

are led through the streets, along with, remember this fellow, Gallic chieftain, Vercingetorix. Stark naked, Vercingetorix blinks into the sunlight he hasn't seen for six years. All three are being led to their execution. When the crowd cries for mercy, the young woman and child are spared. Poor old Vercingetorix is not so lucky. He's taken away for a ritual garroting. It's quite the knees up. The legionnaires march in, singing affectionately bawdy songs about their commander-in-chief, ahead of wagons laden with foreign booty. Numbers are everything.

From the 22,000 tables of gourmet food, to the 400 lions butchered during the accompanying games, to the 1,192,000 enemy that Caesar claims to have killed during his adventures, for which he gives each of his legionnaires a 5,000 denarii reward. Numbers in Greek and Roman sources are chronically unreliable. Do Julius Caesar's wars in Gaul constitute genocide? An awful lot depends at this point on whether you believe ancient sources can count. Was there violence? Definitely. Did a lot of people die? Equally definitely. But the Romans want to conquer and absorb provinces that then provide them with

resources. I do think the genocidal part has been exaggerated. I do not want to eliminate the fact that there was a great deal of death and suffering. Whole battles from the campaigns are restaged, with slaves fighting to the death. The field of Mars, the large parade ground outside the city, is flooded. Scaled-down naval forces redo Caesar's Battle of the Nile. He's just doing it bigger and better again. These festivals are so important to Roman identity. We're seeing lots and lots of enslaved people

being subjected to horrific violence for the entertainment of the crowd. There's some sort of anthropological theories about what this is all for, that it's integrating these warriors who've done terrible things back into the community or perhaps sharing the guilt of this with the community, that we're all going to revel in this violence and conquest. Each night after feasting, Caesar walks home in the moonlight to an escort of elephants bearing torches. The same year, Caesar becomes consul for the third time, in conjunction with a staunch ally named Lepidus.

Caesar will go on to fourth and fifth consulships in consecutive years. Combined with extensions of his dictatorships, it can get confusing. As can his rampant love life. In addition to Calpurnia, Cleopatra, and Queen Juno, he also finds time to have an affair with Tertia, the third daughter of his long-term mistress, Seville. Festivities over, Caesar gets back to business. He organizes free grain for the poor. Post-Spartacus, he makes moves to diminish dependence on mass plantation labor. He offers free citizenship to overseas doctors and teachers. Perhaps mindful of the fact that he burnt down Alexandria's great library during battle,

Caesar institutes a new public library in Rome. And there is something else he steals from the Egyptians. Time. The Roman calendar is hopelessly inaccurate. Based on a lunar cycle rather than a solar one, it's just 355 days long. Dates regularly misalign with the seasons. Haphazard corrections are made periodically to get things back on track. In consultation with Greek and Egyptian astronomers,

Caesar reorganizes the 12 Roman months into a 365-day year, adding a leap year every fourth. Save for the Gregorian revision, the Julian calendar is essentially the one we still use today. Of course, he also introduces a month named after himself,

so you've got the touch of megalomania in there that suddenly the month of July is going to commemorate him forevermore. Caesar's great-nephew, Octavian, who will one day rule as Augustus, will bag a month for himself too. Cleopatra is not out of the picture.

She visits Rome on more than one occasion. Caesar puts her up in one of his houses on the Tiber River, in the company of her young brother-husband, Ptolemy XIV, and a certain infant called Caesarian. There's a rumour that she's jealous, having got word of Caesar's affair with Queen Juno, or Queen you-know-who. To placate her, Caesar puts up a statue to Cleopatra in his new temple of Venus. But it doesn't go down well with ordinary Romans. Attributing god-like status to a mortal is blasphemous. Out in the far-flung regions it seems there is always someone willing to have a crack at Caesar.

This time it's Pompey's sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, who are raising a new army in Spain. In November 46 BC, Caesar marches to confront them in modern-day Andalusia. He storms off at a frightening pace, reaching Hispania, according to the chronicler Suetonius, in just 24 days. He will not return till the following summer. For many later Romans, Cato is till the following summer. For many later Romans, Cato is where the Republic dies. He's the last of the true diehard Republicans. But in fact, the last core of Pompey's support, led by his two sons, is in Spain.

So Caesar has to go back to Spain. And Munda, which is fought in 45 BC, that's the closest Caesar ever came to losing. Munda is an absolute blood fess. Outside the town where a crucial siege swings victory, Caesar's men build a mound of severed heads. Gnaeus' is added to the pile. When Sextus flees by sea, the rebellion seems to be over. Crucially, after Munda, the conservatives are gone now. There's no military force in the Mediterranean that can challenge Caesar, so after Munda, he can come back. It's only actually in that short period after Munda

that he is in sole control. This is Caesar's true dictatorship. This time, victory is followed by a 50-day thanksgiving and a slew of honorifics. When Caesar is hailed by his men again as Imperator, it's added as a permanent title, along with another accolade, Liberator. He also gets the consulship for a further ten years. In an act of false modesty, Caesar stays away from the Senate while these honors are bestowed. When a delegation of senators comes to inform him of the awards, they find him sitting in his half-built forum. That he does not stand to greet them is perceived as an insult. His later protestation that he was suffering from diarrhea does not wash.

Caesar's ego is now becoming a serious problem. In the Senate, he had taken to presiding over everyone in a big ivory chair. It's now been replaced by a tantamount throne of solid gold. Ignoring the kerfuffle over Cleopatra, he has statues of himself commissioned to be placed in the temples alongside the gods. He has his own head minted on the coinage, the first Roman ruler to do so during their lifetime. In 46, he's appointed dictator for 10 years, at which point you'd start thinking, okay, this is manifestly not an emergency measure.

It's just about giving him supreme authority. The thing is, it's clearly popular. I mean, the Senate is busy sucking up by awarding him any number of different honours. But actually, as far as we can see, the population regard this as a basically good thing. He is happy to issue pardons, which makes him seem like this forgiving, generous ruler. In February 44 BC, at the age of 55,

Caesar is reaffirmed as dictator again. Only this time, as dictator perpetuo. Dictator for life. He's also declared parents patriae, father of the nation. His birthday is declared a public holiday. The Senate is not making decisions. They're not even debating decisions. Caesar is simply telling them this is what's been done. And this is all an insult to what the Roman Republic is supposed to stand for. And then you have constantly circulating rumors

that Caesar wants to be a king, that he wants to be a rex. And how far those rumors are real, there is almost no way now of determining. It's not just he's dictator. A dictator is an accepted Roman office, but it becomes dictator in perpetuity. And perpetual dictator is a contradiction in Roman terms. Julius Caesar now walks like a king,

talks like a king. He even wears gold laurel leaves. And he is seemingly grooming an heir, his great nephew, Gaius Octavius, better known as Octavian. On February 15th, at the festival of Lupercalia, there is an incident. During the public procession, which seems to involve naked priests running through the crowd whipping people, Mark Antony enacts an unfortunate charade. As Caesar sits watching, Antony takes hold of a diadem and ornamental headband. In a mock coronation,

he places it on Caesar's head. The crowd falls silent, half in shock, half in expectation. Caesar makes a joke and waves the crown away, not once, but twice. But the damage has been done.

It's the PR thing. It's the, no, no, I don't want to be a king. Take that away, how dare you? But with heavy suspicion that this is all an act, in order to see what the response was. And actually, if the crowd had started cheering, he might have gone with it. Certainly, that's the suspicion.

Now, we will never know whose idea this was, what it's trying to achieve. But certainly from a cynical perspective, it looks an awful lot like testing the waters. Well, the crowd's reaction is utterly negative. We don't want a king. Whether it's wanted or not, with Caesar's permanent appropriation of the position of dictator, the Roman Republic is now embodied by one man. He is acting like a god rather than a man. He's abusing his power. At least for a section of the Senate, he has clearly gone too far and needs to be stopped.

In whispered gatherings, the question of doing away with Caesar is no longer just a fantasy. Brutus and Cassius become ringleaders of a plot. Cassius has added motive. Servilia's daughter, Tertia, the one Caesar's been having a fling with, she happens to be Cassius' wife. Those enmities run deep. Brutus is also married to Cato's daughter, Porcia.

She is the widow of Caesar's first co-consul, the one he humiliated, poor old Bibulus. There's loads of weird soap opera elements going on to all of this. It is wrong to reduce these individuals to just ideals, just political thoughts. These are living, breathing, flesh and blood human beings, very emotional like the rest of us. Momentum builds.

They must choose their moment. Caesar inadvertently gives his would-be assassins a deadline. He's getting itchy feet. He has turned his gaze to the one theatre of operations where the Roman military has never succeeded, the Parthian front. Parthia has risen out of the old Persian Empire. It possesses the only military force in the known world that can match Rome's. Beat the Parthians, push as far as the Caspian Sea, and it will elevate Caesar to the stratospheric level of his idol, Alexander the Great.

Plus, fighting someone other than one's own would be a nice change. On March 18th, Caesar is due to depart. He is to begin his tour with a warm-up skirmish in Dacia, the land today whose name bears the stamp of Roman occupation, Romania. The great Parthian adventure is beyond anything Rome has ever contemplated. Caesar has 16 legions at his disposal. His engineers are even constructing a canal through Corinth to ease the supply line. With Caesar due in the Senate to sign off some business before departure,

the conspirators choose a date for his assassination. The one thing pretty much everybody knows about Julius Caesar is he was murdered on the Ides of March, the 15th of March. The timing, that's relatively straightforward because once Caesar was with his army out in the East, he would be basically untouchable. Caesar is so sure of himself that he has let his guard down, quite literally. He's recently dismissed his bodyguards, his corps of Spanish auxiliaries. The Senate has sworn allegiance to him, after all. What danger could there be? It is almost as if, well, you know, I don't care at this point.

I will keep doing this the way I want. And if fate intervenes, fate intervenes. He doesn't need to launch an invasion of Parthia. He doesn't know where to stop. Very few dictators have that ability to realize this is as far as it goes. He probably just thinks most people must realize it's not in their interest to kill me

because if they kill me, there'll just be another civil war. He's hoping that by ruling well, by governing well, by going off and winning some more victories, everyone will realize, yeah, okay, you know,

it's not ideal, but this is much better than any of the alternatives. To eliminate Caesar, they still need to get him out of public view, somewhere where weapons are forbidden, not to get him out of public vieux, somewhere where weapons are forbidden, not to mention a place he'd least suspect.

They will kill him by their own hand right there in the Senate. Some of them were almost certainly jealous. Some are old enemies. Some of those are deeply embarrassed at having received Clementia. Others are being ruled out of Caesar's new controlled system. And then you've got the one person we always end up talking about, which is Brutus. And Brutus is clearly complicated. Brutus has done very nicely under Caesar.

He's been governor of Cisalpine Gaul. When it comes to corruption, he's got his hand in the till as much as anyone. But he's called upon to comply with Stoic tradition, to do his civic duty. He knew Caesar well growing up, not least because Caesar had affairs with Brutus's mother. While Brutus did end up fighting on Pompey's side and received Clementia, Brutus has clearly been marked out for high office under Caesar. But Brutus has one other massive source of pressure. When the Roman Republic was formed, when the kings were expelled,

the last king, Tarquin Superbus, was driven out in a revolt, led by Brutus. Led by the first man of that name we know anything about. Was the Brutus who killed Caesar a direct line descendant? Well, whether he physically was or not really doesn't matter. He thought he was, so did everybody else. His family, Dignitas, is opposition to tyranny. And graffiti is appearing around Rome. Why are you sleeping brutus? On the night of the 14th, Julius Caesar goes out to dinner. As the evening progresses and the wine flows, he seems in good spirits, optimistic about the next chapter of his life. He expects to be away for three years. As the conversation turns to

philosophy and the question of mortality, Caesar is asked what he considers to be a good way to die. Prophetically, he answers, a sudden death. Little does he know. In the early hours, while Caesar snoozes, his wife Calpurnia tosses and turns. She has a nightmare. She sees their house burning down. She sees herself cradling her dying husband in her arms. In the morning, as Caesar dons his purple robe, she begs him not to go to work. Call in sick. The household staff sacrifice some birds.

The omens do not look good. Caesar is reminded of a consultation he had recently with his harispex, his soothsayer, a man named Spurina. Beware the Ides of March, he had said. Caesar decides to stay at home. In the Senate, news of Caesar's no-show throws the plotters. They dispatch Decimus, Brutus's cousin, to fetch him. Could Caesar just put in a brief appearance to officiate on some minor business? And so, against Calpurnia's protestations,

Caesar sets out. It's half a mile to the Theatre of Pompey, where the Senate is temporarily convening. Caesar is carried in a litter, before doing the last part on foot, walking past his half-built forum. On the way, adoring crowds mob him. A Greek scholar named Artemidorus gets close. Frantically, he passes Caesar a note, a warning, it turns out. But in the celebrity scrum, Caesar hands it to an attendant. Strolling in the spring sunshine to the adulation of his people, what could be better? And with a new war to be waged, more glory, in the sea of faces Caesar spots his harrisbecks. He throws him a friendly quip. Caesar's going to the senate house on the Ides of March and tells the soothsayer in the street,

well, the Ides of March have come. And the soothsayer said in a quiet voice, yes, but they haven't gone. As Caesar enters the Senate around 11am, the conspirators eye each other nervously. Someone waylays Caesar's number two, Mark Antony, keeping him outside. Caesar is greeted warmly by Brutus and led to his golden chair. A senator called Cimber approaches. He is petitioning Caesar for the return of his exiled brother. He had served with Pompey and had expected a pardon.

The plotters seize their moment. They gather round Caesar, presenting respectful arguments as to why Cimber's brother should be forgiven. Little does Caesar know that they have daggers hidden in the folds of their togas. They've agreed on a sign for them to strike. Simba tugs down the shoulder of Caesar's robe. As he does so, a senator called Casca slashes at Caesar's neck. He makes a meal of it, almost missing, merely grazing.

Caesar looks up, dumbfounded. He asks Casca what the hell he thinks he's playing at. When he realizes Casca has drawn blood, Caesar whips out his long, sharp stylus pen and rams it into Casca's arm. But it's too late. Someone else thrusts their dagger into Caesar's side. There follows a whirl of togas thrashing and slashing, some of the senators doing more damage to themselves than to Caesar.

Loyalists try to stop them. In the frenzy, they are beaten back, though their assistance would have been in vain, for Caesar is now mortally wounded. As the final assassin plunges in his blade right into Caesar's groin, there is a look of shock on the dictator's face. The knife wielder is none other than Brutus. Caesar's dying words were almost certainly in Greek rather than Latin, resounding in translation with perhaps even greater poignancy

than in Shakespeare's famous dramatization. Cai sutechnon, you too, my child. Caesar staggers and collapses before the statue of his great rival, Pompey. Recently, as an act of forgiveness, Caesar had it reinstated. His old foe stares down at him. In shame, at his miserable end, Caesar's final motion is to pull his robe up over his face. A toga is quite useful, actually, if you're trying to conceal short blades.

Gathering around traps them in a space. In the Senate House, there are no soldiers. So it is the obvious practical way to do it. And all the accounts of Caesar's body later being displayed, 23 stab wounds, it sounds real. You don't get camera shots of exactly what's happened. But yes, that is how I think it did happen. There's always a tendency with these famous figures from history that they become identified with one element in their life. You can't really talk about Winston Churchill without talking about 1940 and the Second World War, in spite of all the other stuff he did. And Napoleon is 1812, he's Waterloo.

With Julius Caesar, it's the last years of his life. It's the war in Gaul, it's the Civil War, the dictatorship, and then this spectacular assassination, because, you know, how many other figures in history have been murdered in quite such a dramatic way? Fast forward some 2,000 years. We're in Culver City, Los Angeles, in 1952

on the backlot of the old Hollywood studio MGM. Before a giant rendering of Pompey's theatre and an under-construction forum, a crowd of extras is wrangled. Instructions barked at them through a megaphone.

Next to the camera sits director Joseph Mankiewicz. He is hot property in Tinseltown. For his latest trick, he's putting his own spin on the sword and sandals epics that are currently all the rage. Mankiewicz is attempting something both classic William Shakespeare and classical Julius Caesar. On the steps, a young actor comes forward. He's been getting some attention, one of the new breed of intense, twitchy young actors straight out of the method school. Friends, Romans, countrymen, implores Marlon Brando, lend me your ears.

Brando's character, Mark Antony, is towing a cautious line. He's a friend of the murdered Caesar, yet he also has some sympathy for the conspirators. The mob turns to him. He presents his case. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Whether the aftermath played out quite like this, no one knows, though Shakespeare is probably not too wide of the mark. As the murderous senators flee, their white togas splattered red,

messengers run through the streets proclaiming freedom from oppression. Not everyone sees it that way. As Caesar's slaves carry their master's body home, people begin turning out in their thousands in a spontaneous show of affection. Knowing Mark Antony, it is quite plausible that he hedges his bets with a speech that both condemns Caesar's tyranny and also distances himself from the plot. As ever in ancient Rome, the fates will play their part.

It's said that for seven straight days the sun is darkened, with a comet appearing each night. Three days after Caesar's death, with his body due to be cremated and the ashes interred alongside his daughter Julia, the mob demands otherwise. He should be cremated in public, right there in the forum. They storm the Senate and smash up furniture to make the pyre. Old soldiers throw their weapons into the flames.

Women add their jewellery. It's quite a blaze. Scorch marks from the fire can be seen to this day. The mass hysteria turns to rioting. Rome is a tinderbox once again. The real problem with Caesar's murderers is they genuinely don't seem to have had a plan for what happens next. As far as we can tell, they thought that you kill Caesar and it all goes back to normal. But the Roman Republic hadn't been normal for a hundred years. They didn't kill Mark Antony. Antony takes control of Rome.

The conspirators end up all having to flee. Caesar's will is read out by Antony. Eighteen-year-old Octavian, grandchild of Caesar's sister Julia, is declared Caesar's adopted son. Alongside Antony and Lepidus, Octavian will come to form what is known as the Second Triumvirate. The Second Triumvirate will pursue a war of vengeance against a rebel army raised by Caesar's assassins. By its end, all of the conspirators will be dead, Brutus by his own hand. Octavian will have Brutus' head sent back to Rome to be put on display before a statue of his great uncle. Caesar's legacy is enormously far-reaching.

What we finally get is the line of the Caesars. finally get is the line of the Caesars. Octavian makes sure he's got the name of Caesar and a whole load of other Caesar-related names in there. And I mean, that's what his successors do as well. It's a little bit like JFK in a sense. He dies before his career is complete. So therefore, he's looked at in a very positive light, and perhaps people are less critical than they might have been. Over time, Caesar becomes a title, which is why it then becomes the basis for Kaiser and Tsar. And he becomes a symbol, he becomes a word. I mean, there's a modern term, Caesarism,

which denotes being a Caesar. which denotes being a Caesar. Essentially, the idea of the charismatic, populist strongman, this is adopted by Napoleon, most obviously. Napoleon is looking back to Caesar in exactly the same way that Caesar had looked back to Alexander. I think it would be a very strange thing to have a conversation with Julius Caesar. I think he's working from a whole different set of assumptions about how the world works.

The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. These people were not like us. They lived 2,000 years ago in a completely different world, speaking a different language with a whole different set of assumptions. They considered completely normal and unremarkable things that I hope today we would consider, you know, incredibly horrific, like mass enslavement. This impulse to identify with the Romans, we're all prey to it, I know I am. This is what I like about this period of history,

that for one of the first times in recorded history, we have so much information about people like Caesar and Cicero that we can kind of feel like we know them. But I'm very aware that it's a kind of romantic impulse and that it's one that we have to resist. The second triumvirate, like the first, will fall apart, its members turning against each other. Antony will fight from his new corner, Egypt,

where, famously, he also has a relationship with Cleopatra. The pair will try to build a new Eastern Empire. After Octavian's victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra will kill themselves too. Cleopatra, it is said, by way of snake venom. The Republican Senate had been desperate to avoid the advent of a king, but they misjudged the public's appetite for supreme authority. Given his family's lineage, Julius Caesar is proclaimed a god. His soldierly honor, imperator, will be transmuted into a new title, one that will convey absolute power.

With peace finally restored, Octavian will come to rule the Roman world, not just as Caesar Augustus, son of divine Julius. Octavian will be the first Roman emperor. Caesar makes Augustus possible, and then Augustus adds to the fame of Caesar and makes it into something even bigger. The Roman Empire, the height of Roman civilization, and just the image of power. You know, it's why so many nations in history have chosen an eagle as their symbol, and why they get drawn to the architecture.

Not to mention stiff-armed salutes and fanatical cries of hail to a supreme leader. and why they get drawn to the architecture. Not to mention stiff arm salutes and fanatical cries of hail to a supreme leader. At a basic level, the only two people who have a month named after them are Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, which are in August. You know, and we still have this weird Roman calendar

because of Caesar. So there's a lot about Caesar that's just infiltrated Western culture and is there even when we don't realize. Real Dictators will return in the coming weeks, as we journey to Southeast Asia, to Cambodia, with the story of Pol Pot. Thank you.