This is an event that most of us are probably familiar with. Many students read Shakespeare’s interpretation of the final days of Caesar’s life, and the conspiracy is a focal point of every period piece. The assassination of Julius Caesar is probably the defining event of the Classical Era, but I find that the causes for the assassination and the consequences of it are far more interesting than the actual occurrence itself.

Caesar was truly one of the most dynamic characters in the entirety of history, a man consumed by ambition and a constant thorn in the side of the Roman aristocracy, despite coming from a noble family himself. He spent money lavishly for the first 40 years of his life in order to gain supporters and power, and in 59 BC, he finally became Consul, the greatest political position in the Roman Republic. With this new power, and the help of his political allies, he pushed forward a law to redistribute land to the poor, a proposal that the landed class hated. At the end of his term as Consul he found himself in heavy debt and surrounded by political enemies, but he was able to secure himself the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), and thus retain political immunity for a bit longer. Once there, he did what only Julius Caesar would do, and took his four legions over the Alps in order to conquer Gaul (France).

The conquest of Gaul made him the most powerful Roman alive, and this made even more of the political elite turn against him. With his back against the wall he was forced to march his army across the Rubicon, a small river a few km north of Rome. Civil war broke out shortly thereafter, pitting him against what was once his most formidable ally, Pompey. After a long period of bitter fighting Caesar ended up victorious, becoming the sole power in Rome. He used this to enable more reforms, most import of which the Julian calendar, and attempted to slowly rebuild the institutions of the Roman Republic.

The conspiracy to kill Caesar arose when many aristocrats perceived that Caesar was assimilating too much power. With military victory out of the question, these nobles resorted to treachery. Unfortunately for Caesar, many of the conspirators were former enemies that he had pardoned.

Although the conspirators were misguided, there were valid reasons for them to fear Julius Caesar becoming the sole ruler of Rome, yet none of them realized the consequences that would result from the assassination. No one expected that Caesar’s sole heir, his grand-nephew Octavian, would be such an able politician and decide to fight against the conspirators. Likewise, the aristocrats, not in touch with the opinions of the lower classes, did not realize that they would become so hated after killing Caesar. In the end, Octavian and Caesar’s former second-in-command Marcus Antonius teamed up to take down the so-called Liberators.

Unintended or not, the consequences following the assassination of Caesar created great changes in the course of history. Instead of overthrowing tyranny, the conspirators inadvertently created one of the greatest autocratic empires in history, and that’s something that every Roman Emperor would’ve been thankful for.