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Show 41 of a bodyguard and walked the streets alone and unarmed out of the conviction that it was ubetter‘to die once than live always in fear of death." On-the night before the fateful Ides of March, 44 B.C., his wife Calpurnia had a nightmare about his death and begged him not to go to the Senate, a Speech., where he was scheduled to make Upon leaving his house, Caesar encountered a mes- senger who handed him a letter describing the plot and naming the conSpirators -- a letter that Caesar accepted smilingly and casually without reading. met a soothsayer who warned: Ignoring such omens, On the way to the Senate, he "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar entered the Senate build- ing, was surrounded by a group seeming to seek favors and was stabbed in turn by each of them. Caesar, according to Suetonius, As Brutus struck his blow, cried out: "You, too, my son?" Subsequent historians have termed the assassination of Julius Caesar "the greatest blunder in history." 22 A1- though the assassination was intended to prevent Caesar from becoming a royal autocrat, it led to the formation of the Roman Empire under his nephew, Augustus, and to the perpetuation of Caesar's name as an imperial title. To many of Casesarvs contemporaries, deed was eminently justifiable. 22DeBurgh, 92. cit., p. 275. however, the |
