The Rest Is History - 304: The Murder of Julius Caesar

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

“He was trapped - he couldn’t get up. There was blood everywhere. The faces were coming closer, the knives rose and fell. And then, to his relief, he saw Brutus.”  One of the most iconic deaths in history, Caesar’s assassination is the brutal climax to an impressive series of victories: from triumphing during the First Triumvirate, to outlasting Pompey and Cato, gaining Imperator status and becoming dictator for life. How did it all come to such a gory end? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Tilius crouched at his side, holding out his petition. Impatiently, Caesar waved it away, and then, quite unexpectedly, Tilius grabbed hold of the dictator's purple-lined toga and yanked it down. Utter bewilderment flashed across Julius Caesar's face. This is violence, he shouted. Something darted towards his neck.

A blinding pain, a smear of red. Half turning, he saw blood dripping from a dagger. There were people crowding around him now. Familiar faces, friends, men he had trusted for years. They all held knives. Their eyes were hard. More steel flashed towards him. His head was whirling. He raised his hands to shield himself and saw the blood running down his arms. Now he was twisting,

cornered, a wild beast at bay. He could hear somebody bellowing, a monstrous roar of fear and panic, and he recognised his own voice. He was trapped. He couldn't get up. There was blood everywhere. The faces were coming closer. The knives rose and fell. And then, to his relief, he saw Brutus. Good old Brutus. But Brutus's eyes were hollow, and in his hand was another knife. Et tu, Brute? Caesar said, disbelieving. You too, my boy. So, Tom, that's one of the most famous scenes in all history. The assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 BC at the Theatre of Pompey in Rome. It's probably, isn't it, one of the, I hate to use the word iconic because it's such a cliched and overused

word but it is an iconic moment it's been repeated in painting after painting play after play films and even children's books tom like that one that i was just reading so what did that come from dominic so that came from um adventures in time cleopatra queen of the nile by an author not unfamiliar to listeners to this podcast maybe it's a measure of just how iconic the murder of Caesar is that actually between us, we've written up four accounts of the murder of Caesar. So you did it in your book, your children's book. I've done it twice in two books. I've written Rubicon and Dynasty, and I've translated Suetonius on whose account much of your account was based. And actually, I sent it to you, didn't I?

And suggested that you read it. And you scored. And I ignored it. Not going for Suetonius. I'm going for myself. Yes, exactly. It is absolutely one of the most, as you say, celebrated scenes in the whole of history. And it's celebrated partly because it has been said, I think absolutely accurately, that it is probably, we know more about the events of the Ides of

March than we do about any other day in the whole of ancient history. So we can talk about it in some detail. But it's also because it polarises all kinds of political issues that reverberate throughout Roman history. In some way, it's the kind of the great bottleneck in Roman history between the age of when Rome is a republic and when it becomes an autocracy. But also for future generations, for future centuries. justified or whether it was a crime is something that people have debated and that has animated revolutionaries right the way into the present. Oh, you think about the death of Mara or the assassination of any political leader. Couldn't you say, Tom, this is the most emblematic, the most resonant political act in all history? Is that too big a claim?

It's been retold so many times, and perhaps in the English-speaking world, because it's the theme of Shakespeare's play. And Shakespeare's play is so exquisitely balanced between whether Brutus and Cassius, the two principal conspirators, particularly Brutus, whether he's justified in what he does, or whether he has committed a terrible crime. I think you're right. I think that the issues are perennial and irresolvable ultimately. But it's also, of course, a key event in the context of Roman history, because effectively, it marks the end of a very, very distinctive period in Roman history, which is that when Rome is, you know, for centuries has been a republic.

And the conspirators murder Caesar because they think that he has made himself supreme within the context of the republic. And so they are worried that he's going to destroy it. And they kill him to try and rescue the Republic. But the great tragedy, and again, this is why the event is so resonant, the great tragedy of their attempt is that they end up destroying what they've been attempting to save. Yeah. We did a couple of episodes this time last year about Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon and his war with Pompey, with Pompey the Great, which sort of sets the stage for all that. But I know a lot of people won't have heard that. So for those people who are new to this, Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC, isn't he? And he's from a very rich and noble family. And just why is it that Caesar, more than anybody else, comes to personify in the minds of

his assassins, the threat to the Republic? Well, the key to the success of the Republic over the course of its centuries of existence is that it had been absolutely brilliant in providing scope for its most ambitious men to do great things on behalf of the city, while at the same time channeling and framing them so that the ambitions of these men didn't come to put the whole of the Republic in its shadow. For the Romans, the word king was an incredibly dirty word. The Republic, rather like the American Republic, had been founded with the expulsion of a monarchy. And so the idea that a single man could rise to power within the Republic was every Roman's worst nightmare. And so the entire structures of government had been fashioned to ensure that that didn't happen. So the powers of the king had been given to two officials called consuls. Each consul would have power for a single year. There were lesser magistrates. So below the consuls, there were magistrates called praetors who were the kind of the deputies and so on all the way down.

And the idea was that as you know, if you if you had the wealth, if you had the background, if you had the prestige, if you had the popularity with the voters, you would ascend up the greasy pole. You would go up this chain of magistrates and ultimately become a consul and hopefully win glory for Rome by conquering Gauls or whatever. But you would then accept the fact that you'd had your time in the sun and it was time to stand down and let someone else have a go. And this was the way that the Republic had functioned. And it made it incredibly successful because the ambitions of these men were what enabled them to expand through Italy, across the Mediterranean, and become the greatest power in the Western world. What happens in the first century BC, when Caesar is born, is that the Republic has become so powerful, so huge, that institutions and frameworks of government that had worked very well when Rome was a city-state in Italy, is starting to come under pressure and strain. And one of the things that becomes evident is that the old days of allowing someone to have a command for a single

year is inadequate for the scale and sweep of Rome's empire. And that in turn is threatening for the Republic, because it means that one man might be given a command that lasts longer than a year. And that, of course, enables him then to the idea is, is that you can only win certain you're 40, you can become a consul. Pompey has ignored this. He has been after commands right from his teenage years. And he has spent years in the East annexing wealthy Greek kingdoms, bringing them into the Republic. And when he comes back to Rome,

he is kind of trailing. He's got kings in his train. He's got great chests of treasure, all kinds of things like that. So he's too rich, really, for the system. He's too rich. But Pompey is a figure of menacing power in the context of the Republic, but he's an inherently conservative figure. He wants to be acknowledged as the princeps, the chief man in the state. But he doesn't want to overthrow the Republic or anything like that.

He's far, far too conventional. Right. And so he enters into alliance with two other very heavyweight figures, one of them Crassus, incredibly wealthy, also from the kind of same background as Pompey. He's emerged from a civil war, and he ends up dead fighting the Parthians out in the east. Yeah.

His head is used as a prop in a drama and all kinds of things like that. They have a hanging around the court, don't they? Yeah. Parthian court. But the third figure in what is known as a triumvirate, becomes known as the triumvirate, the rule by three men, is this figure, Julius Caesar, who is very, very ambitious. His family, although, as you said, patrician, in fact,

claims its descent all the way back to the goddess Venus, has not been, they haven't been big players through the course of Roman history. And so Caesar is very, very anxious that he should live up to the glamour and the glory of his, you know, his divine descent. And he recognises that the only way really to become a great man in the context of the Republic now is not to play by the rules, but to do what Pompey has done and to grab a command. And his command is he gets first five years and then ultimately 10 years in Gaul, what's now France. And he conquers it. And with this, he becomes as rich as Pompey has done. And he also has a large number

of very battle-hardened and devoted legions at his back and his enemies in Rome try and back him into a corner they try and strip him of his command Caesar is you know he has this excruciating dilemma does he lay down his command risk prosecution but not break the law or does he lay down his command, risk prosecution, but not break the law? Or does he break the law and cross this tiny river that marks the limit of his Gallic provinces, the Rubicon, and effectively declare civil war? And that is what he chooses to do. And so that's what we described in the episodes we did on the Rubicon. Pompey, despite having been regarded with great suspicion by the kind of traditional conservative senatorial elites, he takes the command of the kind of the senatorial cause against Caesar. He withdraws from Italy to Greece because he doesn't have the soldiers that Caesar has for an immediate confrontation in Italy.

Caesar follows him, defeats him at a battle at a place called Pharsalus. Pompey flees, ends up murdered in Egypt. And again, we've talked about that in the episodes that we've done on Cleopatra. Caesar then spends his time pursuing the, basically he has two groups of enemies. He has Pompeians, so Pompey has sons, they want to continue the fight. Sextus Pompey is the most famous of them, isn't he? Yes, he's a kind of perennial survivor in the fight. But he also has these traditionalists, these people who see Caesar as a menace, an aberration, a would-be king. And so they have deep ideological reasons for continuing to fight him. The key opponent, oddly, is someone who doesn't really have a great command. He doesn't have a great track record of

magistracies. He's not a major military figure, but he is a person who has made himself absolutely the embodiment of everything that conservatives and traditionalists in the Republic admire about Rome and about their system of government. And this is a guy called Cato. And Cato has always been Caesar's great enemy. And they come to be seen as the two greatest figures in the Republic. So there's a follower of Caesar who in due course becomes a historian called Sallust. And he writes about these two men, Caesar and Cato, that during his own lifetime, he says, there appeared two men remarkable for their qualities, very different though they were in character. And it's these differences in character that kind of amplifies the sense that Romans have of the significance of both. So they both embody a set of values, don't they?

Caesar is the showman playing to the crowds and Cato is the incarnation of Republican sort of austerity. Is that right? Yeah. So you might say, I mean, it's an analogy that we've touched on before, and this is being very unfair, I think, both to Caesar and to Cato, but you might compare them to the difference between Trump and John McCain for American listeners. Caesar is a flamboyant populist. He is prepared to trample down on the conventions and the norms of the Republic and do so knowing that it will appeal to a substantial base.

So the vulgarity and the offensiveness is part of the point. He's not vulgar. I mean, he's not vulgar. He's not vulgar and he's not offensive. He's a very, very sophisticated man, but he is flamboyant and he is unafraid

to cut a dash. Cato is the absolute opposite. He is kind of hewn out of granite. When he meets foreign dignitaries, he does so on the toilet. He is making a point about the fact that he is contemptuous of anything that is flash, anything that might be faintly redolent of monarchy. And he detests Caesar and Caesar detests him. And in the build-up to the Rubicon, it is basically Cato's obduracy that prevents a compromise from being struck. You know, Cato is as complicit in the outbreak of civil war as Caesar has been. And so in the spring of 46, so this is two, three years after the beginning of the Civil War, Caesar comes to Africa where one of his great enemies, a guy called Metellus Scipio, who is basically a kind of vicious non-entity, chiefly famous for his, he has a particular talent for staging pornographic floor shows, but that's basically it. He doesn't sound like a non-entity at all, Tom. I think you're being very harsh.

In the field of pornographic floor shows, he's a leading figure. He's the big man. But when it comes to military competency, he's hopeless. And he's leading the anti-Caesarean forces in Africa, and he gets defeated at a place called Thapsus. Now, Cato, he is in command of a town that is just down the coast from Thapsus, a place called Utica.

Yeah. And he's brought the news that Caesar has won at the Battle of Thapsus, that yet again, he has triumphed. And he knows that, you know, there's no way of carrying on the fight. So what does he do? He has the choice of submitting to Caesar and he knows that Caesar will pardon him.

Yeah. And this to us is something that's very attractive about Caesar. Yeah, his magnanimity. He's an extraordinary thing, isn't it? He's a very generous man to his former opponents. So he's both formidable, but he's also forgiving. Clementia, they call it, so clemency. But for Cato and for people like him, this is actually incredibly offensive because this is the quality that a master might show his slaves. It's the quality that a king might show his subjects. And so to be forgiven by your peer is incredibly humiliating. And for Cato to be forgiven by Caesar would be, you know, a horror beyond compare. And so he decides that he's going to kill himself. And he he invites his friends to to dinner.

They have a discussion on kind of philosophical themes. Then he goes upstairs and he stabs himself and he doesn't do it very competently. He's found his friends try and stitch up his, you know, his stomach. He's left alone. He pulls open the stitching oh tom pulls out his guts and dies kind of very horribly yeah but very nobly and caesar arrives in utica he's shown cato's corpse um and he kind of stands over the body and says that just as you envied me the chance of sparing you, Cato, so I envy you this death. And there is this sense that although Caesar has defeated all his other enemies, Cato in a sense has defeated him.

Right. Yeah. By not submitting, by not playing by Caesar's rules, by Caesar's new rules. Absolutely. And so within days, within weeks of it being reported back in Rome, Cato has become a kind of victorious emblem, even in defeat. And this is something that will reverberate through Roman history. So Lucan, who writes a great epic about the civil war in the time of Nero, he has this famous phrase, Victrix causa deus placuit sed victor catoni, the gods favoured the winning cause, but Cato favoured the defeated one. So Cato, in a sense, you know, his opinion, his approval is even more important than that of the gods. And this for Caesar is infuriating. And it prompts him to make a mistake. So when he goes

back to Rome from Africa, he stages four great triumphs. So triumphs are kind of military processions through the streets of Rome. He celebrates his victories in Gaul. Yeah. He celebrates his victories in Egypt. You know, this is the kind of Cleopatra in Broilio. Yeah. He celebrates victories in Asia, where he has his famous phrase, Veni Vidi Vici, paraded through the streets of Rome.

I came, I saw, I conquered. A very, very quick victory. And this is a kind of a gloat over Pompey, because Pompey had made his name in Asia. And Caesar is basically saying, it's nothing. I mean, anyone could win a victory here. And then he celebrates his victory in Africa. And it is very, very offensive to contemplate that anyone might celebrate a triumph over fellow Romans. So Caesar is pretending that in Africa, he's been fighting Africans. Of course, he hasn't. He's actually been fighting

Romans. He kind of, he draws a veil over that. But because Cato has basically kind of driven him mad, he's the one guy who's got under his skin. Through the streets of Rome during this triumph, a float is drawn that illustrates the suicide of Cato. And the impact of this on the watching crowds, who normally are very pro-Caesar. You know, Caesar is bestowing great less on them and parades. It's all great fun. But the sight of this, they weep. And Caesar is kind of left furious by this. And he then goes off to Spain because the sons of Pompey the Great are there still holding out. This is going to be, you know, this is the last holdout of those who are resisting Caesar. And back in Rome, a figure decides that he is going to write a eulogy on Cato. And this figure is someone who is very close to Caesar. So he's called Marcus Junius Brutus.

He is the son of Seville, who is Caesar's great love, the great love of his life. So almost like his sort of his schoolboy crush or his girlfriend when he was young. Is that right? Something like that? Yeah. They've had a kind of ongoing relationship through for a long time.

I mean, she's the woman who seems always to have been most fond of and there are rumors that that brutus might be caesar's son yeah so you'd think that that in the civil war brutus would immediately have signed sided with caesar but he doesn't because he is cato's nephew and so he is inspired by Cato's example to oppose Caesar. At the Battle of Pharsalus, where Caesar defeats Pompey, Caesar is very anxious about what has happened to Brutus and orders search parties to go out and find him. And when they find that he hasn't been killed, comes into Caesar's presence. Caesar hugs him, pardons him, bestows honors on him. And so Brutus is now very much a part of the regime that Caesar is trying to set up. I mean, to us, that does show Caesar in an extraordinarily magnanimous light because a lot of people in history that we have talked about, so not 21st

century people, but medieval kings or whatever, would have punished that with instant death or torture or exile. But Caesar's, it's extraordinary that his attitude is, well, you could have backed me, but you backed the other guy. That's fine. We're all friends. I'm so glad you're all right. I mean, what an extraordinary insight into his psychology that he would do that. Yeah. And I think it is a genuine, I mean, I mean, it is very, very sympathetic aspect of Caesar's character. He's not a tyrant. He doesn't put people to death. He raises Pompey statues that have been toppled by his enthusiastic followers. And, you know, he does show this Clementia, which to someone like Cato is deeply offensive.

But to others, you know, it's better than being killed, being parted and being given honours. But with Brutus, particularly, he seems to have been, you know, he's particularly fond of Brutus and therefore particularly kind of happy about it. So Brutus, is Brutus a lovable person? I mean, he's quite conservative too, isn't he? Like a bit like he's a sort of wannabe Cato. He's very earnest. He's very dutiful.

He's very deep thinking. He's a philosopher. He is also descended from the man who overthrew the monarchy at the beginning of the Republic. So he's very conscious. I mean, this is another reason why I think he sides with the kind of the senatorial elites. And it's why the example of Cato's death, his uncle's death, has a particular impact on him. And so in the wake of that, he divorces his own wife and marries Cato's daughter. That's strange behaviour.

By our standards, it is. He's a bit obsessed with Cato. Well, the Romans are much ready to divorce and remarry than we are. Much ready. So it's a kind of a cultural thing, partly. But I agree. I mean, it is making a striking statement. And Portia, who is Cato's daughter,

is absolutely a chip off the old block. I mean, she's the model of standing Roman matron. And so they make a very kind of moral and slightly chilly and forbidding pair, I think. You wouldn't invite them to a dinner party? Well, you might if you're interested in philosophy and discoursing on ancient Roman history and things. I think I'd enjoy that. So you would, but I wouldn't. I think I would. But what he also does is he writes an obituary for Cato.

And he gets someone else to write an obituary for Cato as well. Someone who is not naturally brave, who's been hunkering down, who's been basically kind of wringing his hands, wishing that the whole thing would go away. And this is Rome's most celebrated orator, a man called Cicero. And Cicero is a man who has basically, he's an out of towner. He is, none of his forebears have made it to the Senate. He is the guy who has not only made it to the Senate, but ended up as consul. But he's always kind of very conscious of the fact that he's in the shadow of people who are grander who are uh kind of more elevated more more senatorial if you like than him and he's had a slightly kind of chilly relationship with kato he's a little bit jealous of kato a little bit

he can also see that there's something faintly ridiculous about Cato, I think. Cicero is a very funny, alert, astute, intelligent man, but not naturally heroic at all. But he is persuaded by Brutus to do something that is moderately heroic, to kind of stick his neck out a little bit. And that is also to write a eulogy to Cato. And the news of this is brought to Caesar in Spain, where the fighting is very, very brutal. So we've talked about how Caesar is generally a magnanimous man. In Spain, he isn't at all. The fighting against Pompey's sons is very, very savage. He wins a spectacular battle, the last battle of the Civil War at a place called Munda in march 45 and he allows the corpses of his dead opponents all of whom are romans all of whom are citizens to basically be used as building materials

so their their bodies are kind of mulched up into the cement and the dirt that caesar is using to build fortifications like jimmy hoffer the head of the teamsters yes very like jimmy hoffer but unlike did jim jimmy hoffer cut off heads and stick them on spikes to celebrate his victory? Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I don't think trade unions, labour unions in the 1950s or whatever were quite that bad, no. So, I mean, the idea of headhunting is very kind of associated by the Romans with barbarians. It's not the kind of thing that Romans should be doing.

But Caesar does it basically because he's, you know, he's fed up. He's fed up with this relentless opposition. And the news is brought to him that Cicero, bad enough, but then Brutus has written these ulities to Cato and he's furious and he pens a riposte anti-Cato, kind of basically slagging Cato off, trying to cast him in as negative a light as possible, sends it back to Rome and basically everyone laughs. And of course, that infuriates Caesar even more. So there is this sense that even though all Caesar's enemies have been killed from beyond the grave, Cato is leading the opposition. And this kind of inspires people back in Rome who've been fighting Caesar, who may have accepted his pardon.

But it kind of it both reassures them, but also shames them into a sense that there is still a fight to be fought. So they're there in Rome and Caesar has won in Spain. He comes back to Rome, doesn't he? So he must come back in the turn of 44 BC, thereabouts? So this is another thing that offends the senatorial elite back in Rome, is that he does not hurry back. So from Spain, he kind of goes through southern Gaul. And while he's in Gaul, he offers citizenship to various Gallic luminaries, which is actually a very kind of forward-thinking policy. He has this sense that Rome is actually a very kind of, you know, forward thinking policy. He has this sense that Rome is now a global empire.

And so it's not enough that citizenship should belong only to people born in Rome. So citizenship is spread throughout Italy. But Caesar is now handing it out to Gauls as well. But this is very offensive to the elites back in Rome. You know, they don't like it at all. And then he marches into Italy and he is met in Italy before he has reached Rome by Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, who he had got pregnant in Alexandria and who was turned up in Italy with her son. And it's all, again, very, very un-Republican behaviour because Cleopatra is Greek. She's a woman. She's a

queen. I mean, it couldn't be more offensive to senators, the fact that Caesar would prefer to spend time with her rather than with them. And so he's hanging out with her and it's only in October. So the Battle of Munda was in March. It's only in October that he reaches Rome. And at this point, Tom, our people already, partly because of the association with Cleopatra, who, as you said, is a foreign Greek queen of an extremely rich realm, and one that in Rome has already come to sort of represent luxury, dissipation, corruption, and so on. Are people in Rome already saying of Caesar, he wants to make himself king, he is behaving in an un-Roman way, he's a despot, and all that sort of thing? Or does that come later?

Yes, because there's a huge problem, which is how do you digest the preponderant position that Caesar now has? I mean, it's much, much greater than Pompey had. He's put everyone in his shadow. And so Cicero says of him that, you know, we are his slaves, but he is the slave of the time. So there is some sympathy for the challenges that he faces. But there's also a lot of hostility. How can someone who has all these legions at his back, how can he be moulded into the fabric of the Republic? And the answer is the kind of the classic Roman one, which is always in times of crisis, you don't look forwards, you look backwards. And this is true even of someone as radical and daring as Caesar. So there is in the frame,

in the constitution of the Republic, there is scope for someone to be given supreme power, kind of, you know, overriding the traditional system of magistracies for six months. And the name of this office is one that all listeners will be very familiar with, dictator. Now, the problem for us, I think, is that when we hear the word dictator, we think of Hitler or Stalin. Try and remove that from your minds. Because a dictator is someone who is appointed for six months to save the Republic. And it's happened at kind of periodic intervals throughout Roman history. It is constitutionally sanctioned. And Caesar, he's already been appointed dictator for 11 days back in 49, in the wake of the crossing of the Rubicon. In October 48, he'd been appointed dictator for a year.

So that, again, is kind of, you know, it's constitutional, but it's for a year rather than six months. And then spring 46, so the same time as he's going off to fight Scipio and Cato in Africa, he's appointed dictator for 10 years. And this gives him the right to nominate all the Republic's magistrates. He's given a master of horse, which is his deputy, who's a man called Lepidus. So Lepidus is kind of given a military authority within Rome. Also, much to everyone's amusement, Caesar is created prefect of morals.

Caesar is not a moral man. He's a massive shagger. I mean, he's very promiscuous. He never stops. And so the question is, are these positions sufficient to keep Caesar happy? And when he comes back to Rome, it's kind of evident that they're not really, that they're not sufficient for the preponderant role that Caesar has in the Republic. And so people start giving him ever more honours, ever more titles. But there is a sense in which by doing that, it's a little bit like garlanding a sacrificial bull. Because the more honours they give, the more the Republic comes to see him as cipher, the more Caesar is provoking the envy and the hostility of his peers with consequences that will play out very, very bloodily over the few months that remain of Caesar's life following his return to Rome in October 45 BC. Well, that's the perfect place, Tom,

on which to take a break. So Julius Caesar has about six months left, doesn't he? And we will be telling the story of those six months and what happens to him in the second half of the podcast. So come back after the adverts. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in the final stretch of the extraordinary and colourful

and ultimately doomed life of Julius Caesar, who has become dictator in Rome. Now, Tom, tell us a little bit. What are his plans? What's he trying to do? Well, he comes back and he displays the kind of incredible, almost demonic energy that he has done throughout his whole life. And he is aware that Rome and the people of Rome face all kinds of problems. And so with the power that he now has and that previous generations of Roman statesmen didn't have because they were always having to kind of watch their back and cope with the jealousies of people who were their peers.

Now he can kind of basically force through what he wants. So he plans all kinds of urban improvements. Pompey has built Rome's first theatre of stone, a vast great structure. Caesar inevitably plans a theatre that's going to be larger than that um he plans the largest temperate in the world on the campus marshes which is um with traditionally the place where um the the people of rome would would mass for for warfare but has long since become a kind of place for urban development um he plans to move the tiber to expedite his building schemes. So that's the kind of the measure of, you know, his sense of self-confidence. He famously revises the calendar. So the Julian calendar, this is the a vast city of almost a million people. They need to be kept fed. And Caesar is concerned to improve the condition of the people. That's why the people of Rome love him. Because he's always been a populist. He is a populist. Yeah, playing to the crowds. Yes. So he's kind of pushing through policies that are very effective and that perhaps it took an autocrat to push through.

And he's also looking abroad. So he's founding colonies across the Mediterranean, particularly two cities that have been wiped out by the Romans a century before, the great city of Carthage and the city of Corinth. He plants colonies there. But I think there's also a sense that, you know, even a few months back in Rome, he's already bored of, he finds Rome almost parochial. And also he finds the problem of his position in Rome to be too great. And so, remember, we mentioned Crassus, his kind of former colleague in the triumvirate, had been killed there in a great battle. Caesar decides that he's going to lead a campaign against the Parthians.

And is there an element there, Tom, sorry, is there an element also of emulating Alexander the Great, another friend of the rest's history? So it is said. So there's a story that when Caesar is in his 30s, he sees a statue of Alexander and reflects that by this age, Alexander had conquered the world and he, Caesar, has done nothing. It's hard to know how much that's actually a motivating factor for Caesar himself. Pompey had been definitely influenced by Alexander.

I think Caesar less so. I think Caesar had sufficient confidence that really the inspiration for Caesar was Caesar. I think there's a sense in which he thinks in the East, he can play the role of a king much more easily because there, you because there people are happy to accept that a leader could be, you know, a kind of new Alexander. So in a way, by planning this campaign, he's kind of washing his hands of all the kind of the snarl, the pettiness as he sees it, the resentments that he's having to face in Rome, the kind of the pygmies that are kind of scrabbling around trying to pull him down and all this kind of thing um and so he plans a military expedition for which he's going to leave at the end of march yes and so for his his enemies they have to decide what are they going to do about this and there's a sense in the months that follow his return to rome in october 45 that you know his enemies are kind of they're torn between giving him honors to keep him happy

and facing kind of a series of incidents that provoke all kinds of outrage in them so they they um late in 45 they give him divine honors they allow him to wear the name imperator which means a victorious general as his first name yeah Early in February, a really fateful step. He's appointed dictator perpetuous, dictator for life. And that really, for everyone in Rome is a kind of, you know, who believes in the future of the Republic is the kind of absolute death knell. Because if he's dictator for life, that means that there's no real prospect of restoring the Republic until he's gone. And, you know, a perpetual dictatorship implies a kind of perpetual crisis. Yeah. So it's not even as if it promises the Roman people a solution to its problems.

It kind of says that they are permanent. And that really is the, you know, that is what gets his enemies thinking we need to do something about this. But there are various kind of other incidents that fuel it as well. So he starts to appear wearing the wrong shoes, Dominic. Oh, no way. He starts wearing high red boots. So kingly boots. Kingly boots.

Kingly boots. Right. And so this, you know, it's not a good thing and then on the um on the 15th of february a great festival is celebrated in rome called the lupicalia yeah which we actually kind of discussed i think in the episode we did on the on valentine's day but just to reprise it involves naked men running around uh the uh the palatine into the forum lashing bare-breasted women with goat thongs. And usually it's young men who do this.

They were different times, Tom. They were more or less in times. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy seeing that? And it's mostly young men who are doing this. But on this occasion, there is a 40-year-old man who's doing it. And this is the man who has been Caesar's great lieutenant, right-hand man, and who in 44 BC has been appointed consul by Caesar.

This is a man called Marcus Antonius, better known to us as Mark Antony. And Antony, you know, he goes running around the Palatine, lashing breasts with his goat thong and all that kind of stuff. Topless women. And then he comes into the Forum before the Senate House, which is actually in ruins because it had burnt down eight years before. So it's kind of the scaffolding and repairs everywhere. But Caesar is sitting in front of it.

And Antony approaches Caesar. And the gathered crowd see that Antony has in his hands a diadem that is entwined with laurel. And the diadem is the symbol of monarchy. And Antony stands there his hands a diadem that is entwined with laurel. And the diadem is the symbol of monarchy. And Antony stands there and waits for applause. And there is no applause. There's, you know, kind of dozletree clapping, but otherwise nothing. There's a long pause. And then Caesar orders Antony to put the diadem away. And as he does say, the forum erupts into tumultuous cheering. Doesn't Caesar say, take it to the temple of Jupiter because Jupiter is the only king of the Romans?

He does. So Antony tries to press it on him a second time. And that's when Caesar says that, yeah, Rome will have no other king. So if you're one of Caesar's critics, you think this is a put up job. Caesar was in on this. He was hoping that the crowd would cheer and he would become king. Is that right? Is that a plausible explanation for what was happening become king is that right is that is that

a plausible explanation for what was happening yes i mean that that is what that's what his enemies say and he'd misjudged the the crowd yeah and i think it's very very plausible anything is true my hunch is about about caesar's plans he didn't really care um i think he is i think he's bored of everything to do with rome to be honest. He spent so long abroad in the saddle on campaign. He finds the kind of the pettiness of it all. It's a bit like, you know, it's a bit like when prime ministers enter their imperial phase and they're off going to summits and all that kind of thing. And then they have to come back and deal with local government acts. And it's just beneath them.

And I think he feels, you know, that he can rule as dictator at home in rome he can rule as you know a kind of quasi king abroad and you know he's not really interested in the republic so he notoriously he's you know he says that the republic is is a nothingness a name only that it has no body no substance uh and and i think that i think there is a kind of anxiety that he wants to make himself a king but i think it's also the feeling his enemies have that he despises them and everything that they hold dear and valuable yeah i mean caesar is pretty confident that he doesn't have to worry about them because he he his hunch is is that they know that anything that replaces him will be worse than him so he doesn't have a bodyguard um he knows so there's a guy called favonius who's

who's a kind of models himself on the example of cato um and and he says that you know it's better to have better to have a tyrant than than a civil war and so caesar is pretty confident in that that he can rely on on his enemies not to to do to do something stupid this is the justification for autocrats right up to the present day so the autocrats of the of the 2020s their defenders will say well better a strong man who keeps everything who you know upholds law as long as he's not a complete tyrant better a strong man than these squabbling parliamentary pygmies you know that's that that's always the justification, isn't it? Yeah.

For a move towards authoritarianism. Yeah. And also, I think Caesar feels that he's offered his clemency to all these people. And so he can rely on that. So as we come to March 44, we have Caesar is dictator for life. We have Lepidus, who is his master of horse, effectively Caesar's deputy. Caesar and Antony are both consuls. But there is a guy called Dolabella, who is a Caesarian, who is his master of horse, effectively Caesar's deputy. Caesar and Antony are both consuls, but there is a guy called Dolabella, who is a Caesarian, who is consul designate. So he is kind of scheduled to replace Caesar when he goes abroad as consul. And he's the son-in-law of Cicero.

I mentioned the praetors. These are the officials who are kind of directly below consuls in rank. So there are two particularly distinguished praetors these are the officials who are kind of directly below consuls in in rank so um there are two particularly distinguished praetors so one of them the urban praetor who is responsible for administering rome if the consuls aren't there um can only ever um leave rome for a maximum of 10 days the urban praetor is brutus who we've mentioned yeah then there is a praetor who essentially serves as the kind of the foreign minister the foreign secretary secretary of state um and this is a man called cassius longinus and cassius had uh fought with crassus and had distinguished himself there by bringing back the the remnants of crassus's defeated army um he had fought with pomy, been his best naval commander, been pardoned by Caesar.

And he is a lean and hungry man, as Shakespeare describes him. Yes. So he's generally portrayed as an envious, ambitious, frustrated, embittered man. Is that fair? Or is that a later read? No, I think there's a strong element of that. And Cassius and Brutus, of course, are the people who convene the conspiracy. Yeah.

There is debate among the sources as to whether it was Cassius who led it or Brutus. The version in Shakespeare, and therefore the one that's become canonical, is that it's Cassius who leads it as i said brutus is the heir of the man who expelled the monarchy and therefore kind of feels he has a particular responsibility for it there is a lot of dispute in the sources as to exactly how many conspirators there were so it ranges in number from 80 to about 15 right but those sources could accurately they could reflect the situation tom because if you've got a conspiracy like that absolutely you could have a lot of people who are vaguely aware of it and are sympathetic but are not really prime movers in the conspiracy yeah we're waiting to see how things play out absolutely and the that you know there are kind of various um although the main you know a bit like jesus we have four four principal accounts of caesar's death and they're

written quite a long time after his death. But they clearly draw on contemporary sources. And I think the confusion that surrounds, you know, how many conspirators there were, who organized the conspiracy, what exactly happened, is reflective of the fact that, you know, conspiracies by their nature, as you said, are often kind of veiled in shadow. One person who's not embroiled in it is Cicero. Yeah. But somebody who is in, who, who,

who is complicit in it is a man called Decimus Brutus who had fought with Caesar in Gaul and who's another, it gets very easy to confuse him with, with Marcus Junius Brutus because he, of him also, it said that he might've been Caesar's son. Because there are some, there are indeed some people who say that Caesar's famous words are actually not to Marcus Junius Brutus, but they are to Decimus Brutus when he's

dying, when he's being stabbed. Yes. So on the night before the 15th of March, Caesar is having dinner with Decimus Brutus. They're at the house of Lepidus and the conversation turns to what the best death would be. You know, how best would it be to die? And Caesar answers abruptly and unexpectedly. And then he goes home. And the story is, is that he has strange dreams that he sees himself flying above the clouds, clasping the hand of Jupiter and his wife, Calpurnia. She imagines that she sees their house come crashing down.

She holds her husband, you know, hugs him and realises that he's been stabbed. And then it's said that the doors of their bedchamber fling open by an unseen hand. And so in the morning, again, it is said that this makes Caesar a bit worried. He decides that maybe he shouldn't go and decimus brutus turns up and persuades him to go they have to strike now the conspirators don't they because he's about to leave very soon yeah going to leave for path here and if he had left for path here and had a triumphant campaign their moment would have well and truly passed because then surely he would be in a position to become king. I mean, whether or not he calls himself king is irrelevant. So it's sort of now or never for them, I suppose. Well, it's really interesting. I mean,

of course, they could have employed someone to assassinate him while he was on campaign. But what's interesting, and this again, I think is what makes Caesar's murder so totemic, is that it's not some loner. It's not some agent. It's not some madman. It's not some paid assassin. It's the leading men of the state who do it. And just on their plan. So they obviously, by this point, have a very clear plan that they're going to do it

at the meeting of the, pretty much the last meeting of the Senate before he goes off. Now I know they're meeting at the Theatre of Pompey, aren't they? Because as you said, the Senate House is being rebuilt rebuilt how much is it important to them that it's public that and it's in a political arena is that is that part of their is that a very conscious political gesture yes because that they are making a political statement rather in the way that kato

had done by ripping open his stomach right it's a spectacle of blood and liberty it can't be done kind of in the shadows right he's being sacrificed like a bull you know i said they they're lavishing all these honors on him they're kind of garlanding him and then leading him up to the altar and their plans so the very fact that you were telling us the stories about the dreams tells us something about the problems we have the sources doesn't it because the stories about the dreams are formulaic aren't they yeah i mean they're it's like omens you know they probably didn't even happen um i mean they might have done but they might not it's no way for us to know but from what we know of the sources can we have any sense of whether these guys

have any sort of progressive practical plan for what happens after they've killed julius caesar no i mean they're certainly not progressive in many ways they're they're reactionary yeah practical plan for what happens after they've killed Julius Caesar? No. I mean, they're certainly not progressive. In many ways, they're reactionary. They assume that they will kill Caesar and the Republic will be restored. And Cicero, who approves of the murder, but they don't ask him because they're kind of worried about, you know, he's not really the kind of conspirator type. He will say in due course that they behaved like men, but they planned like children. So they have no real plan at all. However, I mean, it's amazing it doesn't kind of leak out. There are all kinds of presentiments.

So famously, again, people who have seen the Shakespeare play will remember there's a fortune teller called, a soothsayer called Spirina who warns Caesar, beware the Ides of March. So that detail, is that fiction, Tom? Is that made up? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Caesar's death is such a seismic event. And it is seen as one that reverberates through the heavens as well as through the earth, as we will see in due course. It kind of upsets the entire fabric of the cosmos from the heavens to the earth. Of course, people would assume that it had been foretold. I don't know. Sorry, I interrupted you anyway.

You were saying he goes with Decimus. So as he's going with Decimus to the Theatre of Pompey where the Senate are meeting, he sees Spirina and he says, you know, the Ides of March have come and here I am fine. And Spirina turns around and says, they have come, Caesar, but they are not yet gone. So Caesar goes into the Senate House, which Pompey had built as part of his great complex. So there's a theatre, then there are gardens, and then there's this kind of great marble hall with the Senate House. And there's a large statue of Pompey in the Senate House. Caesar has ordered it to be booked up. Nearby, there are games going on.

So there are kind of cheers, spectacles of blood. This is the kind of the background. And then as Caesar walks into the Senate House itself, these sounds dim. The conspirators are aware that there is a potential threat to them in the figure of Antony. And so one of the conspirators is employed to distract him and not go in with Caesar. There are various people who are identified as having done that, but the likeliest candidate is a man called Trebonius, who we'll feature in due course later in the story. So Caesar goes in, the senators rise

to greet him, a mark of respect that Caesar himself had not shown the senator a few weeks earlier. So he has a special chair, does he? A sort of throne type chair? Yes. But this is, so if you imagine, it's kind of like before the meeting of a committee. So the senators are kind of milling around, there are kind of little groups. It's like the guy who's going to chair the committee has arrived, but the meeting has not yet properly begun. And so there is scope for people to come up and ask Caesar for favours, because government in the Republic is very, very personal. So if you want a favour done, you have to approach Caesar personally. And we don't know how many senators there are, but hundreds of them. So

the numbers have been hugely inflated. There were about 900 at this point. Crikey. But they're not all there, surely? No, they're probably not all there. So there've been 300 a few decades previously, and now it's about 900 because it's been inflated by Caesar. So you never see that in cinematic adaptations where there are sort of 50 people. So it's a real kind of House of Commons, House of Representatives type scene. Yes, I think so. And so people come up to Caesar

and one of them is a guy, as you said in your account, Tilius Kimber, who approaches with a petition and then he grabs Caesar's toga. And then a guy called Casca seems stabs him below the throat. And the blows start to rain down.

Yeah. And according to Suetonius, who gives our best account, there were 23 wounds of which, according to the doctor who then subsequently did the postmortem on him, only one had been fatal. And we get the detail from Plutarch that every conspirator had agreed to stab Caesar once, which, you know, squaring those two accounts implies that there were 23 conspirators. But I think that's, you know, I think that's putting too much weight. It's very murder on the Orient Express, isn't it? Yes, it is. It is. But they all have to kind of dip their hands in the blood. Yes. And in your account, you said, you know, Caesar runs, that he cries out. There are actually,

we don't really know. The confusion of the event means that we have kind of various accounts of what happens. So Suetonius says that, you know, he's read accounts in which Caesar lay silent under the rain of blows. Plutarch says that Caesar fought back until he sees Brutus come. So there are various accounts. Caesar's last words, the et tu Brute is in Shakespeare. Shakespeare invents that. Yes, of course. And you Brutus. Yes. His last words, two of our sources, one of whom is Suetonius, they say that in Greek, he says, you too, my boy, my son, looking at Brutus.

But which Brutus? Marcus junius or decimus marcus junius brutus but it's possible i mean you know it's possible in in all the confusion i mean the scene must have been so chaotic and confused that any attempt to impose order on the sources must be a fool's errand because who i mean they probably would have given you different accounts themselves the conspirators yeah yeah and caesar dies he he pulls his toga over his head so that people won't be able to see his face in death blood spills out and laps the base of a statue of pompey the great everybody flees the senators who are not in the conspiracy in a state of mass panic. According to some accounts, there are some who are trampled to death in the chaos. The conspirators who call themselves liberators hold their daggers aloft. Brutus calls out Cicero's name, kind of saying, implying that Cicero had been a great inspiration for this. And they charge out expecting to be greeted as liberators. Caesar's body lies there. And Suetonius gives us the account, the chamber then emptied and his lifeless body lay there a while

until three young slaves bundled it into a litter and carried it home, one arm dangling as it went. Crikey. What an amazingly colourful and resonant detail that is. Tom, a brilliant narrative.

And the great thing is, it's not over is it no because um listeners to the rest is history club can find out immediately what happens next what you know are the liberators greeted with open arms what's going to happen to mark anthony some of you i suspect will know the answers to these questions but you haven't heard it told by the inimitable tom holland as you will be able to if you're a member of the Restless History Club. If you're not, you'll have to wait till Thursday, which is, I mean, no great hardship, but why suffer at all, Tom? Why not just listen to it now?

Absolutely. Pile in. Right. On that bombshell, we will say goodbye and we will see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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