The Death of Julius Caesar
When Julius Caesar entered the Senate that day, a note warning him of treachery was clutched in his hand — unread.
March 15 44 BC
Roman Republic 509 BC - 27 BC
‘The Death of Julius Caesar’ by Jean-Léon Gérôme.
By Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
‘The Death of Caesar’ by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). It shows the crumpled body of Julius Caesar to the bottom left, and the exultant conspirators jabbing the air with their blood-stained weapons. The action unfolds within the Theatre of Pompey, the capital’s first permanent, purpose-built theatre, now lost. This was temporary accommodation for the Senate. An enlarged Senate House, the Curia Cornelia, had opened in 52 BC, but Julius Caesar undertook a reconstruction of the forum which involved moving to a smaller, plainer Curia (meeting house) symbolising the diminished role of debate in his understanding of Roman constitution. In the meantime, the Senate met here at the Theatre of Pompey. The new Curia Julia, albeit somewhat altered, still stands, though Caesar himself never got to hold court in it.
Introduction
On March 15th, 44 BC, Julius Caesar, the most powerful man in Rome, was due in the Senate to receive yet more honours from the Republic. But last night his wife Calpurnia had dreamt she held his murdered body in her arms, and her fears had frankly unsettled him. Brutus told him that he must not look weak, and steered him out of the door.
Translated by RW Livingstone.
He had only gone a short way from his house when a strange slave tried to get word with him. Prevented by the thronging crowd round Caesar, he forced his way into the house and put himself in Calpurnia’s hands, begging her to keep him till Caesar returned, for he had an important message to him.
Artemidorus of Cnidus, a Greek professor, whose occupation had made him intimate with some of Brutus’s circle,* so that he knew most of what was going on, came with the information he intended to give in writing. He saw that Caesar took any petitions and handed them to his attendants, so coming very near, he said: “Read this, Caesar, alone and at once, for it deals with a matter of serious importance to you.” Caesar took the paper and tried several times to read it, but was prevented by the crowds that pressed to speak to him. He kept it in his hand and it was the only paper he had when he entered the senate.
All these things might happen accidentally. But we see the guiding and ordaining finger of God in the place in which the senate met that day* and in which the struggle and the murder took place.
* Marcus Junius Brutus (?85-42 BC) was a Roman politician who had sided with Pompey against Caesar, but after Pompey’s defeat in 48 BC he sued for pardon and was granted it. He was entrusted with the Governorship of Cisalpine Gaul in 46-45 BC, and was one of the prestigious Praetors of the capital for 44 BC. Nonetheless, his misgivings about the direction Caesar was taking in Roman politics only grew, and together with his brother-in-law Cassius he hatched the plot to assassinate Caesar.
* The Senate House in the Forum was undergoing reconstruction, so the Senate met for the time being at the Theatre of Pompey, completed in 55 BC. It was a bold venture: hitherto, Rome’s bylaws had prevented the construction of permanent public seating. The Theatre took its name from the man behind it, Roman statesman and general Pompey ‘The Great’, conqueror of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and Syria, and in his lifetime one of Caesar’s most bitter rivals.
