Ancient Rome · 15 March 44 BCE

How Did Julius Caesar Die? The Ides of March, 44 BCE

By the Aurelius editorial team · 3 min read · Updated 15 October 2026

Last time: Caesar crossed the Rubicon and won the civil war, pardoning many of the men who had fought against him.

On the morning of 15 March 44 BCE, Julius Caesar passed the soothsayer Spurinna, who had warned him of danger lasting until the Ides of March. “The Ides of March have come,” Caesar joked. “Yes,” Spurinna replied, “but they have not gone.”

Master of Rome

By early 44 BCE, Caesar held powers no Roman had held before. He was named dictator for life. His portrait appeared on coins, the first living Roman to be shown that way, and his statue stood among those of Rome's ancient kings. He reformed the calendar into the basis of the one we still use, and he planned a great campaign against Parthia, due to begin within days of the Ides.

He also pardoned old enemies and promoted them. Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius, who had fought for Pompey, were made praetors. To Caesar this was generosity; to proud aristocrats, owing their lives and careers to his mercy was a daily reminder of who held power.

A king in all but name?

Romans had hated the word rex since the expulsion of Tarquin. In January 44, when people in the crowd hailed Caesar as king, he answered, “I am Caesar, not King.” At the Lupercalia festival on 15 February, Mark Antony offered him a royal diadem; Caesar refused it, to applause. Was he rejecting the idea or testing the crowd? Historians still disagree.

Other gestures offended. When senators came to present him with new honours, he received them without rising from his seat. For men raised on the story of the first Brutus, the signs were alarming.

Sixty conspirators

More than sixty men joined the plot, according to Suetonius. Some were former Pompeians; others, like Decimus Brutus, were Caesar's own trusted officers. At its centre was Marcus Brutus, Cato's nephew, who claimed descent from the Brutus who had expelled the kings. Someone wrote on that ancestor's statue: “If only you were alive!”

The conspirators said they wanted nothing for themselves. They believed that killing one man would restore the Republic of the Senate and the laws, and they made no plan for what would come next.

In Pompey's hall

On the Ides, the Senate met in a hall attached to Pompey's theatre. Caesar, delayed by his wife Calpurnia's bad dreams, was persuaded to come by Decimus Brutus. As he sat down, Tillius Cimber seized his toga and Casca struck the first blow. Caesar was stabbed 23 times and fell at the foot of Pompey's statue. A physician later judged that only one wound, the second, in the chest, had been fatal.

His last words? Suetonius says he said nothing, only groaned, though “some have written” that when Brutus attacked he said in Greek, “You too, child?” The Latin “Et tu, Brute?” comes from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar of 1599.

Liberty without a plan

The assassins marched to the Capitol proclaiming liberty, but the city did not rise with them. Two days later the Senate voted an amnesty. Then Caesar's will was read: he left money to every citizen and his gardens to the public, and adopted his 18-year-old great-nephew, Gaius Octavius, as his son. At the funeral the crowd built a pyre in the Forum and burned his body there.

Brutus and Cassius left Italy to raise armies in the East. Brutus minted coins with his own portrait on one side and, on the other, two daggers and the words EID MAR, “Ides of March”. In 42 BCE at Philippi, in northern Greece, both were defeated and killed themselves. The Republic they had killed for did not return.

In their own words

“He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, “You too, my child?”

Suetonius, Life of the Deified Julius 82.2, c. 121 CE

Translation after J. C. Rolfe (Loeb Classical Library). Suetonius reports the Greek words (kai su, teknon) only as something “some have written”. The Latin “Et tu, Brute?” is Shakespeare's, from Julius Caesar (1599).

Why it happened

• Caesar's dictatorship for life ended any hope of a return to normal politics.
• Honours that looked royal revived Rome's ancient hatred of kings.
• Aristocrats resented owing their lives and careers to Caesar's pardon.
• Brutus felt the weight of his ancestor's example.

What happened next

• Caesar's heir, Octavius, entered politics at 18 with Caesar's name and fortune. Read the story →
• A new civil war ended with the assassins' defeat at Philippi in 42 BCE.
• Caesar was officially declared a god, and a temple was later built where his body had been burned.

Why it still matters

The conspirators' belief that killing one man could restore freedom had a long afterlife. In November 1864 the actor John Wilkes Booth played Mark Antony in a New York production of Julius Caesar; five months later he shot Abraham Lincoln, and wrote in his diary that he was in despair “for doing what Brutus was honored for”. The Ides suggest a harder lesson: removing a ruler does not remove the conditions that produced him.

Connected stories

• The Birth of the Republic: The conspirators cast Marcus Brutus as heir to the Brutus who expelled the kings around 509 BCE.
• Caesar Crosses the Rubicon: Victory in the civil war that began at the Rubicon gave Caesar the power his killers feared.
• Augustus: How a Republic Became a Monarchy: Caesar's murder opened the way for his heir Octavius to become Augustus.

Sources

• Suetonius, Life of the Deified Julius 76–89
• Plutarch, Lives of Caesar (60–69) and Brutus (8–20)
• Barry Strauss, The Death of Caesar (2015)
• Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (2006)

Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.