44 BC

Assassination of Julius Caesar

Assassination of Julius Caesar at the Curia of Pompey

Of the 23 reported wounds, Caesar's physician judged only one fatal — and by nightfall, the dead dictator's money and state papers were in Mark Antony's house.

15 March 44 BC: daggers in Pompey's meeting hall

On the Ides of March — 15 March 44 BC — Caesar attended a Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey, a meeting hall in his defeated rival's theater complex; the main Senate house in the Forum was unavailable. Decimus Brutus had persuaded him to come despite his wife Calpurnia's fears, according to Suetonius.

The conspirators — more than sixty, in Suetonius's count — crowded around under the pretext of supporting Tillius Cimber's petition for his exiled brother. Cimber pulled Caesar's toga from his shoulders; one of the Cascas struck first. Suetonius reports 23 wounds, so many daggers striking at once that the assassins wounded one another; the physician Antistius reportedly judged only the second wound, to the chest, fatal.

The words he may never have said

'Et tu, Brute?' is Shakespeare's formulation, not attested testimony. Suetonius preserves the actual alternatives: Caesar may have said nothing at all, or may have addressed Brutus in Greek. The tradition places his death beneath or near a statue of Pompey.

Nor did 'the Senate' kill Caesar: a faction of conspirators acted during a Senate meeting, and the uninvolved senators fled in panic before Brutus could address them.

The afternoon the tyrannicide plan unraveled

The assassins failed to control the Senate or the crowd and withdrew to the Capitoline Hill, uncertain of the public and of Caesar's soldiers. That night, Caesar's official papers and money passed from Calpurnia's custody to the consul Mark Antony — an immediate transfer of political resources to the dead man's ally.

Within days the Senate reached a compromise: amnesty for the killers, confirmation of Caesar's official acts. It was a truce, not a restored republic — the funeral, the Liberators' War and the rise of the Second Triumvirate followed.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at -0044-03-15.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date and place are securely attested, but detailed dialogue, omens and Caesar’s last words vary among later ancient authors.
Suetonius reports alternative traditions: Caesar may have said nothing, or may have addressed Brutus in Greek. Shakespeare’s Latin wording is not established historical testimony.
Antistius’s postmortem judgment is preserved only through Suetonius and cannot be independently medically verified.
The exact formation date, membership and motives of the conspiracy must be reconstructed from sources written after the event.