2023-12-13 13:59:19
The Grim Reaper kissed him in seconds, after words as famous as they were controversial for historians: “You too Brutus, my son!” On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar fell dead from stab wounds from traitors. It was the end of the dictator, not the emperor. So far the best known story. However, little is known about the fate of his murderers. What happened to them? Were they treated as heroes, or accused of being criminals? The answer was offered, although very briefly, by the 1st century historian Suetonius in his writings after narrating how the funerals were:
«He succumbed at the age of fifty-six and was placed among the gods, not only by decree, but by the unanimous opinion of the people. […]. The door of the room where he was killed was ordered to be walled up; The Ides of March were called patricide and senators were prohibited from gathering on that day. Almost none of his murderers died a natural death or survived him for more than three years. They were all condemned, each one perishing in a different way; some in shipwrecks, others in combat and some stabbing themselves with the same dagger with which they wounded Caesar.
Few words for the sad future of traitors. And in a certain way exaggerated, then, of the between forty and sixty conspirators – the sources of the time do not agree on the specific number – we barely know the end of about twenty. This is how he explains it Jose Barroso, historical popularizer specialized in Ancient Rome and author of works such as ‘The Fall of the Republic’, in his dossier ‘Caesar’s Assassins’. So does the historian Peter Stothard in his brand new ‘The last assassin’, a work in which he captures the revenge and the hunt that was orchestrated against them and the subsequent civil war in which the country was plunged.
A death foretold
The sad thing is that Julius Caesar could have been saved. Forewarned by a long list of omens, he considered the possibility of staying in bed that March 15, 44 BC. C. He had an excuse: his delicate state of health. But Gross Tenth, knee-deep in the group of conspirators, made him change his mind. Suetonius states that an anonymous young man also gave him, upon leaving his house, a writing in which he revealed the sad fate that awaited him, but the dictator preferred to keep the paper along with many others that he planned to read.
The goddess Fortune was not with him that March 15. Although it must be said that Caesar, always haughty, also tempted fate. On his way to the Senate he passed by the temple to gloat before the seer who had warned him about the danger that awaited him that day. “The Ides of March have arrived!” he stated sarcastically. The response was equally ironic: “But they’re not done yet.” In the end, what the omens had predicted happened. As Suetonius explained well in ‘The Lives of the Twelve Caesars’, the assassination occurred when Cimber Telio approached him:
«As soon as he sat down, the conspirators surrounded him under the pretext of greeting him; at the Cimber Telio event […] He grabbed his toga by both shoulders, and while Caesar exclaimed: ‘This is violence,’ one of the Cascas, who was behind him, wounded him a little below the throat. César grabbed his arm, pierced it with the awl and tried to get up, but a new blow stopped him. Seeing then daggers raised everywhere, he wrapped his head in the toga and with his left hand lowered the cloth over his legs, in order to fall more nobly, keeping the lower part of his body hidden. He received twenty-three wounds, and only at the first did he groan, without uttering a single word.
Plutarch, in ‘Parallel Lives’, collected a similar version. Although he also added that Caesar sought, with his eyes and some words, the support of Brutus, whom he had great esteem. He only encountered, however, the cold stab of betrayal. «Those who were prepared for that death all had their swords naked, and Caesar found himself surrounded by them, offended by everyone and his attention was drawn everywhere, because everywhere only iron was offered to his face and eyes, he did not “He knew where to direct them, like a beast in the hands of many hunters.” Marco Antonio, his great friend, could not do anything, since they had entertained him elsewhere.
Plutarch narrates that Caesar’s death brought with it confusion. The citizens locked themselves in their homes, afraid of what could happen, while the murderers left for the Capitol, “not as fugitives, but smiling and joyful, calling the crowd to freedom.” Cicero supported them and, from that same day, interceded for them before the Senate, calling them liberators. Mark Antony, for his part, went from hating the conspirators to supporting their amnesty; Although, on March 18, he attacked them again by bringing the dictator’s toga, holey and covered in dried blood, before the senators.
From this point on, a give and take began between both sides that ended in a true civil war. Although they were officially protected by an amnesty signed by the Senate, the tension that existed in the capital – in part, favored by Caesar’s most veteran legions, who were crying out for revenge – caused most of the conspirators to leave at all costs. run from the city.
Death to death
One of the first to fall was Cayo Trebon, a great friend of Caesar and, against all odds, one of the greatest instigators of the conspiracy. Plutarch says that, during the Ides of March, he was in charge of entertaining Mark Antony so that he could not help the dictator, although this is a fact in which classical sources differ. In any case, he was governor in the province of Asia until vengeance overtook him. According to the historian of the time Dio Cassius explains in his great ‘Roman History’, he was captured while he was sleeping in the port city of Smyrna back in 43 BC. He spent several days of hell in which his torturer, Dolabella, did all kinds of things to him. evils In the end, he was decapitated and his head, in Stothard’s words, was used to train in a ball game.
Another whose joy did not last long was the famous Decimus Brutus. The Spanish author explains that, after the Ides, he maintained his position as governor until Mark Antony demanded that he hand over his province. After he declined his demands, Caesar’s great friend launched his armies against him and surrounded him in Modena. In the midst of that chaos, the Senate, under the orders of Cicero, sent Octavio, the dictator’s adopted son, who at that time was less than two decades old, to help him. That went halfway well. Although the reinforcements allowed the siege of the city to be lifted, Octavio refused to join the assassin.
‘Vercingetorix delivers his weapons to Julius Caesar’, by Lionel Royer (1899) ABC
Seeing that his support was reduced, Decimus tried to run at full speed to Macedonia and join the other conspirators Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus. However, along the journey, dangerous as it was, he was captured by a Gallic tribal leader very close to Caesar. He cut off his head upon discovering his true identity and sent it, as a gift with a bow, to Mark Antony himself in the year 43 BC. As if that were not enough ignominy, and even if the already decapitated murderer cared very little, his legionaries They united Octavio.
Basilus, the next on the list, was one of the few conspirators who did not leave Rome. Stothard tells that he was murdered by his own slaves, although it is still unknown whether in revenge for Caesar’s death, or due to his obsession with mutilating servants as punishment. In any case, none of the murderers were tried for it. Like him, Cicero also left this world, who, although he did not participate in the Ides of March, supported the “liberators” from the beginning, as he used to call them. They cut off his head and hands and displayed his remains in the forum. As farewell to her, Mark Antony’s wife ordered that his tongue be torn out and impaled with one of her hair clips.
Great battle
However, the greatest defeat suffered by Caesar’s assassins occurred after the formation of the Second Triumvirate by Mark Antony, Octavius and Lepidus. In 42 BC, the first two faced forces recruited by Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus in two successive battles fought at Philippi, Greece, between October 3 and 23.
Longinus fell in the first, after being surpassed by Marco Antonio. According to Plutarch, he took his own life: «Of the purely human events that occurred in this business, the most admirable was that relating to Cassius; because, defeated at Philippi, he killed him with that same sword that he used against Caesar. On the 23rd he did the same to Brutus. At first, the general refused to go out to fight against the Second Triumvirate. In the end he decided, but everything ended in disaster, as his army was overwhelmed and he was forced to flee. He died that night, although under strange circumstances, as the classical historian made clear in his work:
“Brutus retired to some distance with two or three [de sus hombres], of whom was one Strato, who had made friends with him on the occasion of the study of oratory. So he placed him at his side, and holding the sword by the hilt with both hands, he threw himself on it and died, although some say that it was Strato himself who, at Brutus’s entreaties, turning his face, held him firm. the sword, and that he, throwing himself with the impetus of his chest, had pierced his body, leaving him dead.”
According to the Anglo-Saxon author, the last conspirator to die was Cassius of Parma, “the nineteenth and last murderer”, as recorded in his work. He sought refuge in Athens, city of poets and philosophers, and embraced the teachings of Epicurus. In principle, this taught him not to fear the afterlife. «Death brings no pleasure nor pain. The only bad thing for me is the pain. Therefore, death does not have to be bad. However, during the next fourteen years of his life he admitted to having suffered nightmares at the thought that revenge could befall him. He kept faith in being forgiven until one of Octavio’s assassins finished him off.
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