They called themselves the Liberators and stabbed Julius Caesar 23 times to save the Roman Republic. Within 20 years, Rome had its first emperor.
By 44 BC, Julius Caesar had made himself dictator perpetuo — dictator in perpetuity — an unprecedented concentration of power in Roman history. A growing faction of senators, alarmed that he intended to crown himself king, began secretly organizing against him. The group swelled to nearly 60 conspirators, including some of Caesar's closest allies.
A soothsayer had warned Caesar weeks earlier to 'beware the Ides of March.' On the morning of March 15, 44 BC, a man pressed a written note into Caesar's hand at the Theatre of Pompey warning him of the plot — but Caesar never opened it. He walked to his death holding the unread message.
The conspirators struck at a Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey. Caesar was stabbed 23 times. A physician later concluded that only one wound — to his chest — had been fatal; most of the blows were too frantic or poorly aimed to be lethal on their own.
When Caesar recognized Brutus among his attackers, he reportedly pulled his toga over his face rather than fight back or speak. Shakespeare's famous dying words — 'Et tu, Brute?' — were invented. The real Caesar appears to have died in dignified silence.
Mark Antony's funeral oration the following day was a masterclass in political manipulation. Rather than praising Caesar directly, he read Caesar's will aloud — which left money and public gardens to every Roman citizen — and displayed Caesar's blood-soaked, perforated toga to the crowd. The mob turned murderous, and the conspirators fled Rome.
The assassination triggered 17 years of brutal civil war rather than restoring the Republic. The Liberators were systematically hunted down. Brutus and Cassius both died at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC — Cassius by suicide when he falsely believed Brutus had been defeated, and Brutus shortly after.
The Roman Senate, in an ironic postscript, voted to deify Caesar after his death. He became Divus Julius — the Divine Julius — a god of the Roman state. His adopted son Octavian leveraged this divine lineage to justify his own rise to power, ultimately becoming Augustus, Rome's first emperor.
The Liberators had killed Caesar specifically to prevent one-man rule. Instead, their act catalyzed the very outcome they feared. The Roman Republic — which had governed for nearly 500 years — never recovered, and the Roman Empire that followed would last another 500 years in the West and 1,500 in the East.