The Ancients - The Ides of March

Episode Date: March 14, 2021

In 44 BC, the Ides of March took on a new significance. Previously observed as the first full moon of the new year, the 15 March is today remembered as the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar. In this episode, Dr Emma Southon talks Tristan through the events leading up to the Caesar’s assassination: was he forewarned with omens in the days preceding his death? Who was involved in the plot and why did they want to kill him? Did Caesar really say 'et tu Brute?' And what of the more important 'other' Brutus? Emma tells the story of this momentous day.Quick note: Caesar wasn't technically killed in the Senate House. He was killed in the senate meeting room, which at that time was held in the Curia of Pompey.We also follow the theory that it was upon seeing Decimus Brutus, not Marcus Brutus, that Caesar gave up and stopped resisting his assassins. The debate continues!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, tomorrow is Monday the 15th of March.

It's the Ides of March, everyone. So it's the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar. And that is the topic of today's podcast. To talk through the assassination from the background to the murder itself to its aftermath, why this is such a significant event in ancient Mediterranean history, I was delighted to be joined by Dr. Emma Southern. Emma has written a couple of books, including one on Agrippina the Younger, and more recently, a book all about murder in ancient Rome called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Emma was a fantastic guest, brilliant in talking through the assassination. So without

further ado, here's Emma. Emma, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk about Julius Caesar. And especially at this time of year, I mean the Ides of March, 15th of March, it does seem to be, this is the most famous date in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is certainly the only one now where you will still get newspapers that do articles about the Ides of March. Nobody's talking about any other date in Roman history these days, but everybody knows the Ides of March and to beware it. Exactly to beware the Ides of March as we're going to get into but let's start with the background first of all so let's go to the start of 44 BC. So Emma the end of the civil war Caesar he's now back in Rome but what's

he been doing? So Caesar has by 44 conclusively defeated everybody around him. He came back to Rome after he had been governor of Gaul, where he had beat them into submission and then been the first Roman to properly go to Britain and show off their prowess there. And he had come back. People had threatened to prosecute him. He didn't like that. So he marched on Rome in order to prevent it, which the Senate was not expecting at all. So Pompey and the Senate had had to flee. And then Caesar had absolutely destroyed them. Pompey's dead. He was his only competitor in terms of power and in terms of the respect that he commanded. And Caesar has now come back and told everybody, it's all right, lads, I have resolved the problem of the civil war, which I started.

And he has then gone about for the past couple of years doing lots of constitutional and social reforms to shape the empire in his own image, basically. He's following in the footsteps of Sulla, who had done it previously, and had done lots and lots of social reforms. But he is going much further than Sulla, partly because he is giving himself lots of powers which Sulla never had. He has given himself permanent tribunician power, for example, which means that he can veto the Senate. He has made himself dictator for 10 years earlier on. He's given himself the power to choose all of the magistrates. So he is the person who picks consuls. He is the person who picks who's going to be tribune. He has filled the Senate, which is depleted from the civil war. So he has

filled it up with people who like him. And he has rejigged the calendar, which is the thing that people mostly remember him for. The previous Roman calendar was a disaster, to be honest. It's amazing that they went with it for so long, but it's 355 days a year, which obviously does not correspond to the actual length of the year. So in order to prevent the months from drifting along the solar year, every so often the Pontifex Maximus would insert an extra month. So he would insert a 28 day month into the middle of the year. So you'd be going along happily and then all of a sudden you'd have an extra month. Standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, standard. And because there had been a civil war going on for so long, nobody had got around to doing this for a really long time.

So the year had drifted really far away from the actual solar year and it was getting to the point where they were celebrating like harvest festival in april which was real fun so caesar with mathematicians and astrologers introduced a new one which is 365 days with a leap year but he has basically come back and spent four years completely reshaping everything from what day of the week it is to how one becomes a consul and impacted almost every part of people's lives, which has started to freak people out quite a lot. It starts to freak people out. And you mentioned it, I think, in passing just there. And I know the list is extensive, so we're not going to go through all of them, but he's received a shed load of honours by this time, hasn't he? A terrifying amount of honours. We'd be here for the rest of the podcast if we listed all of them. But most importantly, he's given himself virtually every possible title.

He is censor. He is imperator. He is Pontifex Maximus. He is dictator. For 10 years until just about six weeks or so before he's murdered, he declares that he is dictator for life. He has got a shiny golden chair, which he's allowed to sit in. He's got a statue of his which is carried amongst the gods. So when they parade the statues of the gods at the beginning of games and things, there's a statue

of Caesar in there. He's got a statue of himself amongst the ancient kings. He's made himself sacrosanct. So touching him in public is now illegal and not just illegal, but blasphemous or getting in his way. He's got temples to himself. He's got temples. He's building a temple to his ancestors. He has inaugurated a college of priests for himself. So people are now making sacrifices to Julius Caesar. And he has granted himself the right to wear red knee-high boots, which sounds ridiculous. But in the same way that if you were to draw a stereotypical French person,

you draw them with a beret and a stripy shirt. That's like the stereotype of a king. If you asked a Roman child to draw a king, they would draw shiny red knee-high boots. And so he's given himself all of this stuff, which is above and beyond anything that anyone else has ever got. And at every point in his day-to-day life, he is being placed on a pedestal that is amongst the gods rather than amongst the people. Crikey. So he's very powerful at this time, basically, which is really interesting. All that detail, if we're talking

about the early months of 44 BC, coming up to the height of March, our main sources for this information, Emma, we've got five main sources, do we? We do, which is quite a lot for a Roman thing. The earliest one is from the reign of Augustus, so it's only about 30 odd years later, and is by far the most flattering to Caesar, because Niklaus of Damascus, he is trying to get back into Augustus's good books when he writes it. But they're all fairly consistent. Details change, but they're fairly consistent. We've got Niklaus, then we have Suetonius, who is writing under the Emperor Hadrian. So he's about 100 odd years later. Then we have Appian, who's about the same time.

He's writing a thing of the civil wars. And Plutarch, who is a little bit later, about 200-ish, who writes biographies. So he writes what's called parallel lives. And he sees Caesar as being a parallel to Alexander the Great. sees Caesar as being a parallel to Alexander the Great. And then we have Cassius Dio, who is the least detailed and is writing in 220, 230 odd, so 250 years later, and is very clearly drawing off of the previous ones. And you can see as you go through, because they're so detailed, and they all see this as an incredibly significant event where they take from one another but they're mostly from about 150 to 200 years later. So we have these sources incredible

sources interesting sources shall we say so let's talk about you highlight this in your book three main incidents that occur before the eyes of March. Emma, incident number one, Caesar and the senators, what is this? This is the one that is generally considered by the sources, all of whom are senatorial sources. So they are very much on the side of the senators here as being like the incident that really sparks everything, which is that Caesar is sitting in his shiny chair

in the forum that he is building. So he's building a forum and a temple and he's overseeing it like someone from Grand Designs. He's a proper project manager. And he's sitting in his chair making notes on whatever design things he's doing. And the senators have had a meeting without him and they come over dressed in their best togas, which is a difficult garment to wear. So they've really dressed up for it. And they voted him a load of honours that they want to grant him. So they pootle over to see him and they

wait for him to stand up and greet them, which is what you're supposed to do. The protocol of respect in Rome is very, very clear. There's no room for ambiguity. When a senator comes, no matter who you are, you stand up and greet them. And he just doesn't. He just ignores them. And eventually one of his attendants has to jab him with their elbow and say, look, who's come to see you, Caesar? At which point he deigns to look at them and ask what they want.

But he still doesn't stand up and greet them properly. And they are furious and embarrassed and highly disrespected and then to make the situation worse they give him these honours and they say this is what we've decided to grant you and his response is to look at the list and say all right I'll have some of them but the rest of them just no I'm not interested and give them back the tablet and then just go back to what he was doing. And this is just an unbelievable act of disrespect and of rudeness, which cannot be tolerated. All the senators have left really is their self-respect and their ego and the idea that people will treat them correctly.

And Caesar is now not even doing that. He's taken away their right to fight elections. He's taken away the chance that they will ever be able to bring honour to their family again. And now he is stamping on their faces, essentially. And the best thing, the only defence that anyone can come up with for this is Dio, who's much, much later and who really likes Caesar and thinks Caesar is brilliant

because he's very used to emperors. And his best reason is that he thinks that Caesar was having an attack of diarrhea and didn't want to stand up in case he made a mess. And something's gone really badly wrong with your legacy. If that's the best thing someone can say about you. I love how the best defence comes from our latest source, writing 300 years later, saying,

actually, he just had a bit of a problem at that time. I mean, that is amazing. Just before we go on to the next one. So it sounds like he's humiliated these senators and their pride. It seems like the pride takes a huge hit here. It does. And there's such rigid protocols for behaviour in the Roman Senate and such rigid ways of talking to each other. And it's a highly flattery-based social economy where everybody tells each other they love each other very much and how brilliant one another is and then say that they hate them and the idea that caesar would have taken on his role so completely that he now won't even bother to engage in the social economy is just a massive

blow and that is what makes people start going home and little conversations that were happening at dinner parties suddenly become a lot more concrete about what are we going to do about this. This can't go on. Incident number two, the Rex incidents. Yes. So there's two of these. And in one, someone calls Caesar Rex while he's riding past on his horse. And Rex is king and it is a dirty word to the Romans. It's the most disgusting thing that you can say about somebody. And Caesar being Caesar, he's quite smart and witty. And he does say, no, my name's not Rex, it's Caesar. And it's brushed off. But the tribunes, there's two tribunes who take it more seriously, and they hunt down the guy that said it and tell

him off, basically. caesar's not very happy about that he doesn't want people doing anything to do with him that he isn't in charge of but it kind of would have probably been fine except that another incident happened shortly afterwards whereby somebody puts a crown on one of his statues and again caesar brushes it off but the tribunes hunt down the person who did it and imprison them and this angers Caesar now this is two times that they have interfered with justice and they have interfered with the people who were his power base and their response to Caesar and Caesar isn't having any of it he gave them their jobs and he's not going to stand for them getting in his way. So he imprisons the two tribunes. And this is a gross violation. It's like imprisoning

the queen. Like, you just can't do it. Actually, a better example would be technically the queen has the power to say, no, you can't be prime minister when minister comes and says we want to form a government. Technically, she can do that, but she doesn't. And if she did, everyone would be like, whoa. Technically Caesar has the right to imprison the tribunes because he's given it to him. But the fact that he does it makes everybody go, hang on a minute, you can't do that.

The tribunes are sacrosanct. They are the voice of the plebeians. They are apart from the Senate. They are supposed to be a voice of control over this kind of thing they're not supposed to be you can't just go around imprisoning them that's another way in which he grossly underestimates how people are reacting to him and grossly oversteps the boundaries of what they will accept oh dear caesar that doesn't sound good at all but just before we move on the word rex king you mentioned it was a dirty word. Why is it such a dirty word, particularly for the Roman senators? and what makes Rome better than everyone else is that they had a king called Tarkonus Superbus

who had overstepped the boundaries of what was a constitutional monarchy and had become a tyrant. So they had overthrown him and they had thrown out the kings and then set up this republic, which was very much based on checks and balances and no one person,

you know, there's two consuls, there's two tribunes, nobody has too much power, nobody's supposed to have power for more than a year. And it's really core to their identity that they have this republic that is totally democratic and that they will never give power to one man again. And as a result, when people start throwing around the word king, it really cuts to the core of their self-mythologising as to why Rome is so great.

Fair enough. So we've had two incidents already. They seem pretty bad in themselves. But then we get the big one, incident number three. What is this? The big one. The Lupercalia, which is in February. And it is a big festival where a bunch of elite men get naked in a cave and then cover themselves in blood and then run through the streets of Rome, hitting women with sticks. Right. It's a cracking good time for all of the family and it's kind of a fertility festival and everybody thinks it's hilarious but it's a

really big deal it's a big festival and mark anthony who is caesar's right hand man he is the kind of leader this year of the lupacalia and so they run through the city and they end up in the forum in front of Caesar sitting on his fancy chair overseeing the whole thing and the whole city's there to have a great time and be hit with a stick and then Antony out of somewhere remembering that he is nude but out of somewhere he pulls a crown an actual diadem and he presents it to Caesar and depending on which source you read depends on what happens but basically he's offered it Caesar either lets it be put on his head or takes it and then gauges how the crowd reacts and the crowd is not keen on seeing Caesar wearing a crown they boo when they

see it and they cheer when he takes it off and he puts it on and off a couple of times just to check they're not happy with it and so he is makes it look as though he has been forced to put this on he has plausible deniability but to his enemies to the people who supported Pompey to the people who are already very frightened by what Caesar has been doing for the past 10 years. What they have just seen is their greatest enemy wearing a crown, sitting in a golden chair in front of a crowd of Romans wearing a crown. And this just really kicks them into high gear, made worse by the fact that Caesar is just about in the next couple of weeks to go to Parthia.

Actually, you mentioned Parthia there. So just before we then go on to the conspiracy and the conspirators themselves, is there something about the Sibylline books and the whole idea of Rex and Parthia? Is that somehow related to this moment too? Yeah, there's this allegedly a prophecy that only a king will be able to take Parthia. And there's a conspiracy theory going around that the only way in which Caesar will be able to win is if he declares himself a rex. And some people think he's going to declare himself king of some random client kingship, or that he's going to declare that he's king of Dacia or something. But some people think that he is going to say that he's king of Rome in order

to fulfil the prophecy, which doesn't help. Oh dear, no, it doesn't help at all. So time is of the essence for these senators, for these conspirators. First of all, Emma, how many conspirators were there? A lot, somewhere between 30 and 60, depending on who you ask. But there's a lot. I mean, there's 900 senators, so it's still a minority, but there's a good amount of them who are having conversations with one another, having dinner with one another each evening, and then mingling around. And they're quite clear that they never have big meetings

because Rome is not a closed society. People will spot that. But they're quietly passing information amongst each other and building this idea that they don't have a lot of time and if they don't get rid of season now then they're going to lose the opportunity forever and so who are the figureheads at the top of this conspiracy so it's just three main ones there's marcus brutus who is son of savilla and it is kind of rumored that he might be the illegitimate son of caesar but that's kind of a conspiracy theory he is a pompeian who had fought with pompey against caesar but had been forgiven there is gaius cassius longinus who is the same

another senator who fought with pompey and had been pardoned and then there is decaius Cassius Longinus, who is the same another senator who fought with Pompey and had been pardoned. And then there is Decimus Brutus, who is the Brutus. And he is a longtime friend and close family member of Caesar, who has been by his side all through his time in Gaul when he was genociding Gauls and all through his time in Gaul, when he was genociding Gauls, and all through his career. And he is, when they get him on their side, that's when the conspiracy really becomes something real because they have someone close to Caesar. It's so interesting, particularly in ancient history, when you hear of plots in the ancient Roman or ancient Greek Hellenistic worlds, where you hear of these plots that they come off the grounds, they actually start building momentum. When they have that one key figure who is close to Caesar who's like a prominent in the

regime which really kick-starts and it sounds like this Brutus figure was one of those people yeah and in the later sources you get lots of stories about people trying to convince Brutus to join as well because the person who overthrew the last king Tarquin was a Brutus and so Decimus Brutus has this heritage and you get people writing on his statues of like when are you going to live up to your heritage when are you going to kill the tyrant that kind of thing and he feels that social pressure to live up to his namesake but he eventually joins because although he loves Caesar he sees that Caesar is going down a path that can't really be defended anymore if you are going to say you have restored the republic or made the republic great again then you can't

go around also throwing tribunes in prison and wearing a crown like it's just not living up to what you're saying you're doing yeah some interesting crosses there isn't there make the republic great again but also wearing the diadem so going on to the plot the conspiracy you talked about them meeting in small groups very revolutionary as the date is nearing why do they ultimately decide of all places to attack Caesar to kill Caesar the senate house they choose the senate house or during a senatorial meeting one because they hope that senators will join in with them that once they see what's happening other senators might join in secondly because it's a place where Caesar won't be surprised if people approach him. And you can very easily hide daggers under a toga.

A toga is like two meters of wool. It's really easy to hide something in there. And thirdly, because they want to make it clear that this is not a murder of a person, where they have other plans to throw him off of a bridge and to stab him while he's coming out of the theater and things like that but they decide to do it in a political place in order to show that this is a political decision and that's why they decide not to kill mark anthony as well it's to show that this isn't a personal thing against a faction

this is a political decision within the extremely well-established by this point tradition of killing people who threaten the Republic. So they decide to do it in this political space to make that statement. Is that their thoughts when they're preparing this plot, that their aim, what they want to achieve, that with Caesar's death, oh, it will all go back to the Republic of old that we've been dreaming of? that does seem to be it because they have no plan for what's going to happen afterwards it's very clear that their plan ended at the point where caesar died they have nothing after that so it's pretty clear that they didn't want to take any kind of control in his place they kind of assumed that everyone would

go well that was one odd period in our history and then it would go back to being what it had been before where everybody could compete to be consul and maybe later on somebody else would become another Caesar well we'll see what happens after the assassination in due course then. Catastrophic warfare, bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles. I'm James Rogers and over on the World Wars we're on the front line of military history. We've got the landmark moments. Understandably, when we see it from hindsight, the great revelation in Potsdam was really Stalin saying, yeah, tell me something I don't know. The unexpected events. And it was at that moment that he just handed her all these documents that he'd discovered sewn into the

cushion of the armchair. And the never-ending conflicts. So arguably, every state that has tested nuclear weapons has created some sort of effect to local communities. Subscribe to The World Wars from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Let's put the world back into the world wars. So let's go on to the 15th of March, the Ides of March, the day itself.

And Emma, I've got to ask about the omens first of all. Leading up to this day, they haven't been very favourable to Caesar they haven't Romans love an omen they love an omen at all situations and it's amazing that they got anything done with the amount of things they think of omens the omens that are listed are completely different in every source which I quite enjoy there's no overlap whatsoever which suggests they're just completely made up. Suetonius is the earliest one to have kind of proper omens. He loves an omen. He has one where some tombs were dug up in Capua and a guy called Capus, who's the ancient founder of the town of Capua, his tomb is discovered and it has a bronze tablet in it, which basically says something like,

of Capua. His tomb is discovered and it has a bronze tablet in it, which basically says something like, when this tomb is moved, a son of Ilium will die and Italy will suffer, which is a bit much. His second one is even more on the nose and it has a bird called the Kingbird flying into the theatre of Pompey, chased by other birds while carrying a laurel leaf in his beak and then the other birds kill him on the statue of Pompey which is like okay sure the one that comes up most often is that they have lots of dreams him and Calpurnia have dreams she dreams either that she's holding Caesar or they both dream that their house is falling down or that the facade of their house is falling down in some way. Calpurnia is Caesar's wife. Yes and she's very upset by the dreams and kind of tries to beg him not to go but she's a woman so he's just like, ugh girls. There is in

Suetonius and in Plutarch as well we have the classic soothsayer who warns him not to go from Shakespeare. Neither of them are as good at writing good lines as Shakespeare. So instead of Beware the Ides of March, Spirina says, there is a danger coming which will happen no later than the Ides of March. Just flows off the tongue, that one. Yeah, really trips right off the tongue. And Plutarch also has Caesar doing a sacrifice where he cuts open an animal to investigate his entrails and the animal has no heart which is definitely a bad sign Plutarch being Plutarch

bless him he has a need to explain everything so he does tell his reader that that's not normal just in case you thought the animals were hopping around with no heart and there is various sacrifices where the omens are unfavorable and which tells Caesar very much not to go anywhere near the senate this week Emma I find it absolutely astonishing as you mentioned the Romans they do love a good omen and they do love omens particularly preceding an infamous moment in their history I'm thinking Boudicca and Colchester and so many others. But it is just astonishing. We're not even talking about the Ides of March itself yet, but the quantity of omens that we hear about apparently that occur in the days just before the 15th of

March. Yeah, so the bird is apparently the day before and Plutarch also has lights in the heavens. So during the night there's lights and there's rumbling and crashing noises heard and the night before caesar's windows and doors will suddenly fly open and wake him up and to read them it sounds like the entire city is being bombarded with birds dropping out of the sky and loud noises and flashing lights, like an absolute cacophony of omens occurring to which everyone goes, and Caesar just keeps going and ignores them all. Well, he ignores them all. So we get to the day itself and talk me through the journey, the walk from Caesar's house to the Senate house? So he has called the

senatorial meeting because he's about to leave. So they can't start until he gets there. And he has done several sacrifices, Roman sacrifice constantly to check that everything is going to be okay. And all of them have come up badly. Plus his wife had the dream, plus the doors flying open. So he decides that he's not going to go. And they send Decimus Brutus to persuade him. So he talks Caesar into going. And basically what he says depends on how much the source likes Caesar. But basically he says, come on, we can't do this without you.

Everyone's waiting for you. You can't just keep a thousand people waiting. And eventually he persuades him to go. Some of the sources are really cinematic about what happens next and have someone trying to warn Caesar. So either someone presses a scroll into his hand with a note written on it saying what's going to happen and he just hands it to his secretary and doesn't read it. In Plutarch, I think, someone runs to warn him and by the time he gets there, it's too late. And so he runs after him, but he can't get to Caesar because there's too many people crowding around him

and he's pushed back by the crowd and just watches Caesar go to his death. But people try to warn him, which he ignores. He sees Spirina on the way and being charming, jocular Julius Caesar, he says, hey, the ides of march has come and i'm still going and sperina replies ah but they're not finished yet he then gets to the senate someone sidetracks mark anthony outside while caesar then does another sacrifice the

animals in rome live a terrible life and someone sacrifices again to make sure that everything auspices are okay, that the gods want them, and it comes up badly. So they do it again, and they've worked their way through God knows how many animals by this point, but all of them are coming up with don't do it. And Brutus again has to say, this is ridiculous, come on. Caesar's not afraid of the gods.

And so Caesar goes in, And despite everything which has happened, which is telling him not to go, he goes and sits in his chair. And then the assassination begins. Yeah, what happens? Talk through the assassination. Every single person has a slightly different version. But the basic details are all the same, which is that one guy comes and kneels down at Caesar's chair and asks him for clemency for his brother who has been exiled by Caesar. And Caesar tries to brush him off. So this guy grabs Caesar's toga. Caesar hasn't been touched in public for a long time, and he's not happy about it. But this grabbing of Caesar's toga by Kimber is the sign that it's all going to begin.

Either he's holding him down or he is exposing his neck. And someone comes up behind, a guy called Casca, and stabs him in the neck. He's aiming for the neck, but he kind of hits that collarbone bit in the shoulder, which makes Caesar stand up. At this point, Caesar's reaction depends on who you're reading. Some of them have him just being shocked and being thrown around silently as everybody comes at him and stabs him. One of them has him grabbing the knife, which I quite like as quite a badass move. One has Caesar stab the hand that is holding the knife, stab Casca's hand with his pen my personal favorite is one has him grab casca from behind him and then throw him across the room but regardless of what

his reaction is he is vulnerable he is exposed he's got a knife in him and everybody just comes at him and 20 odd people start coming at him. They all describe it as Caesar being buffeted about from one knife to the next and people trying so hard to hit Caesar that they're hitting one another. And a lot of them come away with injuries to themselves because they're being hit by knives which are coming into the fray. Like it's a real mob that attacks him. coming into the fray. It's a real mob that attacks him. Then in Suetonius, which is the main one that Shakespeare draws off of, for example, is when he does the you too, my child. He sees Brutus. He realizes that this isn't just Pompeian faction, that this is something that even people who are

his allies have joined into. What he says is kaisi technon, which is a Greek quotation. But after Suetonius, you get a few who have him. He sees Brutus and that's when he gives up, basically. That's when he realises he can't fight it and he covers his face and he goes down. It is so interesting. I mean, it's gruesome, but it is so interesting to hear. As you say, it wasn't just the Pompeians who were part of this conspiracy. It's when it dawns on Caesar that it was actually his allies too who had decided that this was too far his heirs and that moment when he sees that it's his closest allies and that that whole day Brutus had been like come on come on come on he hadn't just been doing normal

policies but he had been pushing him towards this that he just gives up it's probably the only time in his life that Caesar ever gave up for anything he was a fighter from the beginning absolutely Brutus has been orchestrating the whole thing he said getting him to the senate house it was his main mission and he accomplished it exactly that assassination is a remarkable story I know you've done a lot of work on murders in the Roman forum because with senators in particular we have seen other gruesome murders of senators on other senators before this? Yes, it had become, for the 50 years before that, 60, 70 years, become a bit of a hobby for senators to kill one another and to kill magistrates in the forum or while there is an election going on. One of the earliest is Tiberius Gracchus, who is a tribune who tries to lead some land reforms. Land reforms are a constant thorn in

the side, which ends with Tiberius being beaten to death by senators who rip apart their own benches in order to beat him to death in the middle of an election. And then Gaius Squacus, who's Tiberius's brother, is also killed and beheaded after he tries a more clear-cut attack on the Republic, but he is beheaded and killed. There's a guy called Saturninus who is killed after he has somebody else. He has one of his opponents beaten to death during an election, and he is then killed and stabbed. Catiline, who was killed by Cicero. Cicero will claim until his dying day that that was legitimate, but there was no trial. And he had him killed behind the scenes with nobody looking.

There's Clodius Pulcher, who is one of my favourite Romans, who is killed in a street brawl between two paramilitary factions on the street. And that's just the big ones that there's a lot of violence which is happening. And every time this happens, the person who does the killing says that they're defending the Republic. And they say this person wanted too much power, this person wanted to be a king, this person, they were trying to raise up the people to be a tyrant. And so we were defending the Republic, so we killed them. And that is a legitimate defence for all of Roman history, really, but it had become a legitimate defence for private action. You mentioned one

name there, which I'd just like to talk about quickly now, which is Cicero, because we haven't talked about Cicero really at all in the Ides of March or beforehand do we have any idea what Cicero's viewpoint on this was after the fact Cicero suddenly takes a really strong opinion beforehand he is less keen on taking a stance he's a bit of a coward but after the fact he takes a very strong stance and he is very very pro the assassination so pro the conspirators he believes that they were killing a tyrant and that it was a legitimate action in order to cut off the head of a threat he doesn't believe that they are murderers and he doesn't like augustus at all and so after the fact he never writes about where he was or what he was doing, or he never publishes those writings on the day. He never says anything about that, which is a big

gap because he writes about everything. So it's a conspicuous gap. But afterwards, he's very much on the side of Brutus and Cassius and other Brutus, and very much in the camp that they were taking a political action that was legitimate. All right then, so Caesar has bled out, his body is on the ground of the senate floor, you've got these senators around him with their blades out, blood dripping from the blades, must be a horrible scene. But what is the immediate aftermath of Caesar's death? What do the conspirators do next? Everybody instantly flees back to their houses and Caesar's body is left there until three enslaved men come and get it and take it home. Everybody just runs and then everyone sits and waits to see what's going to happen next. They are waiting to see whether Mark Antony will raise any kind of army against them

or whether he will try to bring the troops in. They're waiting, whereas Mark Antony is just trying to decide what he's going to do. There's a lot of nipping backwards and forwards between each other's houses, but there's a stalemate until the next day when they have a meeting about it. And they discuss what they're going to do in terms of Caesar's funeral,

which is, are they going to honour him as a fallen consul and tribune and Pontifex Maximus and give him the funeral that he would have got if he had dropped dead of a heart attack as a politician? Or are they going to throw his body in the Tiber and say he was a tyrant and there's a fairly 50-50 split between the two and eventually they kind of agree that they will give him the funeral that he deserves because enough people want it but they're not going to make too much of a big deal out of it and nobody wants there to be another civil war there's been so many they've all lost so many of their

friends and family that nobody wants it and it looks like they're going to come to an accord where maybe the conspirators will be right and they will get what they want and they have the big state funeral Anthony causes a bit of a scene by showing the toga he then forces Cassius and Brutus and a couple of the other conspirators to leave but he's not going to raise an army against them he's not going to try to enact revenge and the kind of accord that they come to is that cassius and brutus and the higher level conspirators their career is over they're self-exiled from rome no one's going to try them, but also no one's going to let them be consul again. But maybe things will get back to normal. But what they don't account for is Octavian,

who has been posthumously adopted by Caesar in his will. He's his great nephew. He's 19 years old. He's a frail, fragile little boy who has no experience really with anything. And he comes back to Rome. And initially, everybody is a bit like, right, there's a teenager here. A 19-year-old turns up. A bunch of 50-year-olds are not threatened by that situation, which was very wrong of them because he is incredibly dangerous. And he says, I'm Gaius Julius Caesar now.

He's my father. I take his name and I want revenge for my father's death. He raises a personal army. He gets into quite a lot of arguments with Mark Antony about this because Mark Antony's like, what the hell are you doing? He forces the Senate at the point of a sword to make him a consul at 20, which is very illegal. He's outside the city with his army.

He sends some guys in to say, we need you to make Octavian, who's now Julius Caesar, consul. And they say, no, you're not allowed to be consul until you're 40 for a start. We've basically no idea who this lad is. No. At which point, one of his henchmen pulls out a sword and says, either you do or this does and oh god okay sorry yeah and then that overturns everything that accord is gone Anthony has to decide whether he's going to ally with Octavian or whether he's going to ally with the conspirators who killed his best friend but Octavian just comes in looks at the table which is very carefully being put back together in the hope that they can maybe have a normal life again and just kicks it over I find that

really really interesting how we have this fragile peace as it were in the aftermath of Caesar's death between Mark Antony and the conspirators and then this teenager comes in who people think oh he's just a fragile little teenager. In fact, he's a bulldozer. He smashes right through it and he absolutely destroys it. He does. And he just does a lot of stuff that, much like his adoptive father,

he does stuff that nobody would expect you to do because it just isn't done. He raises a personal army. What's that about? And he basically raises them from Caesar's that about and he basically raises them from caesar's old troops that he will pay them with caesar's money and they're going to get revenge on their old commander's death and everyone's like hang on a minute what um and then he marches into the senate and demands that they give him consular power and that's never happened before

and they don't know how to deal with it. And he just absolutely smashes the peace that they have developed because the peace is developed based on acceptable, normal behaviour. Nobody else wants to do anything that's going to make the people or the rest of the Senate hate them or get their mum to tell them off. Whereas he doesn't care. He doesn't care what people think of him in that time, except that he's going to get revenge. And he takes after his adopted father very much in that way.

I mean, if Caesar's assassination, it seems to spark this arrival of Octavian onto the scene in its aftermath. I mean, Emma, if it's not the end of the Republic with Caesar's death, but what is the significance of it? The main significance is that it teaches Octavian how not to be assassinated. And it teaches Octavian what he needs to do, because Octavian is incredibly smart and very, very good at public relations with the people and with the army and then with eventually after he stopped killing them with the Senate. he's incredibly good at knowing what he needs to do to keep people on his side or to get rid of people who are not on his side and what it teaches him is that you cannot go outside of the bounds of what senators will accept basically you need to let them have their pride you need to let them have their respectability you need to let them have some kind of semblance of self-respect and you can't take anything which has not been precedented. So you can't outright say,

oh, I'm dictator for life. You have to give yourself the power to be dictator for life without telling anybody that that's what you've done. And what he learns is that you have to be dictator for life without telling anybody that that's what you've done. And what he learns is that you have to be a lot more subtle than Caesar ever was. And this is really Octavian's genius. Partly he's really good at using people, but partly he's really good at looking back on past mistakes and how overt people have been when they are trying to, quote unquote, restore the Republic and how not to do that. And that's what kills the Republic. Because if he had been more overt,

if he had made the same mistakes as Caesar when he was being less of a teenage warlord, he has his teenage warlord phase, but then he comes back and is the first citizen. If he had been moreover and had given himself dictator for life or had said i'm consul forever or there's only one consul now and it's me or something where he had taken a position and tried to subvert it then he probably would have ended up with a knife in his kidneys but because he very cleverly gives himself titles which don't really mean anything, but convey that he's better than everyone else,

and powers which are separate from having a formal job title, and a lot of little things which add up to him being dictator for life and king, but which never even come close to anybody. In order to describe it, you would have to sit there for 20 minutes and say andy can do this and he can do this and he can do this you can't just say he's a king which is what you could do with caesar i mean yes he learns the lessons shall we say this teenage warlord he's a smart boy indeed just before we finish i've got to mention it because

i'm happy to admit that part of my research for this podcast was looking at the assassination of julius caesar on hbo's rome and it's so cool seeing how in the tv industry they mixed it all together like the grabbing of the dagger with his hand from plutarch the taking away of the toga the asking about his brother coming back from exile it is so interesting how you can sometimes gel the stories together to put it onto the big screen yeah and they do a really really good job i have to say that kieran hines is my caesar and when i imagine caesar i used to imagine will self because he's basically described will self tall and slightly balding and a bit but now i just imagine kieran hines like that is perfect casting and the way that they do it with him being buffeted about by the various things,

like a kind of scared beast. And then as he falls at the feet of Pompey's statue and he pulls his toga over his head, which is a very early one, that's from Niklaus. It's really, really well done. It's less chaotic, but that's because you need to see it. But it's a really good, and's less chaotic but that's because you need to see it but it's a really good and he'll be my julius caesar forever no one else will ever live up to that there you go well kieran hines if you're listening as of course you must be we've got to have you on the ancients podcast in the future too to hear about your caesar experience emma that was an amazing chat last thing your book on ca Caesar's murder and so much more is called...

And lots of others. It's called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And there's a good chapter on lots and lots of senators being murdered during the late Republic, including Caesar, and then lots of other kinds of horrible murder as well. Sounds like a good Sunday weekend read. Emma, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for having me We'll see you next time. that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes

to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.