The end came quickly. A group of Senators approached. Daggers were produced – metal flashed.
In a frenzied attack, the most powerful man in Rome was stabbed 23 times – mafia style. ( in the mafia, all must make the same hit, in some cases, so all take equal responsibility).
Caesar suffered 23 stab wounds on the Ides of March, but only one of them was mortal -the second stab wound, he received to the breast.
One group formed a perimeter around Julius Caesar, the outer to block any friend or allied senator to aid him.
Julius Caesar and others used Gladiators in non military clothing, to give and appearance of approachability, but still preformed a defense around governmental men, unfortunately, that star crossed day, Julius Caesar had already dismissed his body guard .
The Senate was surprised Caesar hadn’t come earlier to their meeting and were on edge.
So they sent Decimus Brutus – he was only man closet enough, trusted enough, to Caesar, to convince him to come – time was running out.
Little did, Julius Caesar know – 60 some-odd of them had daggers under their togas, waiting to strike.
They choose the day of doom – the Ides of March (March 15th).
Caesar was scheduled to leave for another war with his legions. They were heading east, the 18th of March – so carpe diem, none the less.
Perhaps he did not well receive, the omens given, which is why successors would be more careful.
(An omen is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. People in ancient times believed that omens bring a divine message from their gods).
Prognosticators (fortune tellers) had advised Caesar to be wary of the Ides of March.
As Caesar began to pass the prognosticator along his usual route, he stated,
” the Ides of March has come.”
The response left another omen,
” yes, but it has not passed.”
We know, Julius Caesar‘s friends were alarmed at certain rumors and tried to stop him going to the senate-house.
His doctors, did the same because he was suffering from one of his occasional “dizzy spells“. (possible epilepsy).
Even his wife, Calpurnia, was especially frightened by some visions her dreams.
She clung to him and said that she would not let him go out, that day, so Caesar relented.
Still, Julius Caesar was a risk addict his entire life, so when as asked by Decimus Brutus, ‘What is this, Caesar?’
‘Are you a man to pay attention to a woman’s dreams and the idle gossip of stupid men, and to insult the Senate by not going out, although it has honored you and has been specially summoned by you?‘
Previous to this, Julius Caesar had already angered the senate, and it do not go well.
It was enough, to sway Julius Caesar and he left.
He met his end, around noon, on the Ides of March, 44 BC.Caesar entered Senate meeting – there the course destiny was waiting for him.
For the 2nd time in his life, Augustus lost a father, but now on the verge of manhood he thrust himself into the storm of Roman politics.
The death of Julius Caesar was not just a turning point for Octavian, the man who would become the Emperor Augustus‘ life, it was a turning point in world history
After Julius Caesar was assassinated, Octavian was named in Julius Caesar‘s will as his adopted son and heir.
The past decades of internal fighting had weakened the Empire –northern tribes harassed the borders, enemies were confronting Rome in the east, and the province of Spain threatened to break free.
Julius Caesar moved quickly to bolster the frontiers and his own legacy, but had no heir, so when Augustus completed a dangerous mission, he adopted the teenager in his will. Augustus realized he had a tremendous opportunity.
Julius Caesar, after recovering the Spanish provinces, planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against the Parthians.
Augustus, who had been sent on in advance to Apollonia, (n Cyrenaica: modern Libya – founded by Greek colonists) devoted his leisure to study.
As soon as Augustus learned, his uncle had been slain and that he was his heir, he was in doubt. Not knowing for awhile, whether or not to appeal to the nearest legions, so initially gave up the idea as hasty and premature.
How ever accepted, even though he was advised not to -it was ‘too dangerous‘.
Then he levied (mobilized) armies and henceforth ruled the State, at first with Marcus Antonius (MARC ANTONY) and Marcus Lepidus, then with Antonius alone for nearly 12 years, and finally by himself for 44 yrs.
Along with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Julius Caesar . (Because they to maintain and control the power they were given after Julius Caesar’s death).
The Second Triumvirate was torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members.
But when his designs were opposed by Marcus Antonius, who was then consul, and on whose help Augustus had especially counted.
However, Antonius would not allow him even common and ordinary justice without the promise of a heavy bribe.
Augustus, went over to the aristocrats, who he knew detested Antonius, especially because he was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina, and trying to drive him by force of arms, from the province given to him by Caesuoar and ratified by the senate.
Accordingly, at the advice of certain men, he hired assassins to kill Antonius , but when the plot was discovered, fearing retaliation, Augustus mustered veterans, by the use of all the money he could command, both for his own protection and that of the State.
In the former of these, Antonius writes, he took to flight and was not seen again until the next day. When he finally returned, he was without his cloak and horse. These were a thought to be a signs, he played the part not only a leader, but of a soldier as well, and that, in the thick of the fight, when the Aquila (eagle-bearer) of his legion was sorely wounded, he shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time.
Lepidus was driven into exile and stripped of his position, and Marcus Antonius committed suicide with Cleopatra following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Augustus Caesar, in 31 BC. ( the sediction of marc antony and his suicide.)
The Roman civil war was still raging, at the dawn of the 1st centenary, the world was ruled from Rome,but Rome was in turmoil.
Civil war had engulfed the capital city, dictators seized power, and the Roman future seemed bleak. However, from the chaos the Roman Empire would rise stronger and more dazzling than ever before.
Within a few short years, it would stretch from Britain, across Europe, to southern Egypt, from North Africa, around the Mediterranean, to the Middle East.
It would embrace hundreds of languages and religions and would turn those diverse cultures, into a rich soil from which Western civilization would grow –Rome –the world’s first and most enduring superpower, spanning continents and epochs.
Until the time of Augustus, Mars had only 2 temples in Rome: one was in the Campus Martius, the exercising ground of the army; the other was outside the Porta Capena.
However, Augustus was known to have an ancestor who had appeased Mars, the god of war.
Within the city there was a sacrarium (“shrine,” or “sanctuary”) of Mars in the regia, originally the king’s house, in which the sacred spears of Mars were kept. Upon the outbreak of war the consul had to shake the spears saying, “Mars vigila” (“Mars, wake up!”) – an account of this custom is also in the New Testament in the Bible -stating Christians do not have a God that sleeps.
Under Augustus the worship of Mars at Rome gained a new impetus; not only was he traditional guardian of the military affairs of the Roman state but, as Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”), he became the personal guardian of the emperor, in his role as avenger of Julius Caesar.
His worship at times rivaled that of Capitoline Jupiter, and about AD 250 Mars became the most prominent of the di militares (“military gods”) worshiped by the Roman legions.
In the books of Asclepias of Mendes entitled Theologumena, tell of Augustus‘ Conception.
When Augustus‘ mother Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of Apollo.
She had her carriage set down in the temple and fell asleep, while, the rest of the matrons also slept.
All of a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away.
When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colors like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths.
In the 10th month after that Augustus was born and regarded as the son of Apollo.
Augustus was born just before sunrise on the 9th day before the Kalends of October in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius, at the Ox-Heads in the Palatine quarter, where he now had a shrine, built shortly after his death.
In fact, Octavian, the man who would become the emperor Augustus, would eventually choose the location of his future home carefully.
But there was just one problem, Augustus was afraid of lighting- there was reason why.
Initially, Augustus wanted it appropriately near, where the history of Rome began, on the Palatine Hill –an obvious choice for the man who was about to begin a new chapter in Roman history, as the first emperor of Rome.
Augustus bought the house of the famous orator and a contemporary of Marcus Tullius Cicero, who wrote about and also used the site for his own projects.
While the expanding villa, which constructed in 36 BC, the building was struck by lightning, and this was interpreted by the soothsayers (fortune tellers) as a sign from the god Apollo.
Consequently, Augustus ordered a magnificent temple to Apollo, later built on the spot where the lightning had struck, and organised an inauguration ceremony with the court poets.
Augsustus‘ father,Gaius Octavius, was the first to become a senator, from the beginning of his life, a man of wealth and reputation.
Macedonia fell to his lot at the end of Gaius Octavius‘ Praetorship (; on his way to the province, executing a special commission from the senate, he wiped out a band of runaway slaves, refugees from the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who held possession of the country about Thurii.
(Classical Latin: Praetorship, also spelled prætor) was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army (in the field or, less often, before the army had been mustered); or, an elected magistratus (magistrate).
While returning from Macedonia, before Agustus‘ father could declare himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly.
Augustus now age 4, in dangerous time which civil war had flared for decades, feuding nobles many controlling large armies fought to gain power.
Though others, have said he was a money-changer, and was even employed to distribute bribes at the elections and perform other services in the Campus.
As a matter of fact, being brought up in affluence, he readily attained to high positions and filled them with distinction.
Marcus Antonius began, trying to disparage the maternal ancestors of Augustus and bullied him about having a great-grandfather of African birth, who kept first a perfumery shop and then a bakery at Africa.
Cassius of Parma also taunts Augustus with being the grandson both of a baker and of a money-changer, saying in one of his letters: “Your mother’s meal came from a vulgar bakeshop of Africa; this a money-changer from Nerulum kneaded into shape with hands stained with filthy lucre (blood money and bribes.)
Augustus answers with a steady blow, by taking the high road- he doesn’t know why his former name would be tossed at him as an insult.
It was just after, he took the name of Gaius Caesar and then the surname Augustus, the former by the will of his great-uncle, the latter on the motion of MunatiusPlancus.
When some expressed the opinion, that he ought to be called Romulus, as a second founder of the city.
Plancus carried the proposal that he should rather be named Augustus, on the ground that this was not merely a new title but a more honorable one, in as much as sacred places too, and those in which anything is consecrated by augural rites are called “august” (augusta), from the increase (auctus) in dignity, or front movements or feeding of the birds (avium gestus gustuve), as Ennius also shows when he writes:
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“After by augury august illustrious Rome had been founded.” |
As Augustus was entering the city on his return from Apollonia after Caesar’s death, though the heaven was clear and cloudless, a circle like a rainbow suddenly formed around the sun’s disc, and straightway the tomb of Caesar’s daughter Julia was struck by lightning.
Again, as he was taking the auspices in his 1st consulship, 12 eagles appeared to him, as to Romulus, and when he slew the victims, the livers within all of them were found to be doubled inward at the lower end, which all those who were skilled in such matters, unanimously declared to be an omen of a great and happy future.
This is what we are told of his attitude.
He was somewhat weak in his fear of thunder and lightning, he always carried a seal-skin (type of raincoat) with him everywhere as a protection.
At any sign of a violent storm took refuge in an underground vaulted room.
Because he read, seals are never struck by lightning; and also lightning never goes more than 5 feet below the ground.
He also commissioned shrine to Jupiter the Thunderer because of a narrow escape; because during his Cantabrian expedition- during a march by night, a flash of lightning grazed his carriage and struck the slave dead, who was carrying a torch before him.
Augustus also built the forum because of increase in the number of the people and of cases at law, which seemed to call for a 3rd forum, since the 2 previously were no longer adequate.
Therefore it was opened to the public with some haste, before the temple of Mars was finished, and it was provided that the public prosecutions be held there apart from the rest, as well as the selection of jurors by lot. (abbrv. lottery)
Many pernicious practices militating against public security had survived as a result of the lawless habits of the civil wars, or had even arisen in time of peace.
Gangs openly went about with swords by their sides, ostensibly to protect themselves, and travelers in the country, freemen and slaves alike, were seized and kept in confinement in the workhouses of the land owners; numerous leagues, too, were formed for the commission of crimes of every kind, assuming the title of some new guild.
Therefore to put a stop to brigandage ( robbery committed with violence and armed by criminals generally in gangs.)
He stationed guards of soldiers wherever it seemed advisable, inspected the workhouses, and disbanded all guilds, except such as were of long standing and formed for legitimate purposes.
He burned the records of old debts to the treasury, which were by far the most frequent source of blackmail.
He made over to their holders places in the city to which the claim of the state was uncertain.
He struck off the lists the names of those who had long been under accusation, from whose humiliation nothing was to be gained except the gratification of their enemies, with the stipulation that if anyone was minded to renew the charge, he should be liable to the same penalty.
To prevent any action for damages or on a disputed claim from falling through or being put off, he added to the term of the courts thirty more days, which had before been taken up with honorary games.
To the three divisions of jurors he added a fourth of a lower estate, to be called ducenarii and to sit on cases involving trifling amounts.
He enrolled as jurors men of 30 years or more, that is 5 years younger than usual.
But when many strove to escape court duty, he reluctantly consented that each division in turn should have a year’s exemption, and that the custom of holding court during the months of November and December should be given up.
During the Empire, the argentarii had by law the obligation of purchasing the newly coined money from the mint and circulating it.
All the accounts and bookkeeping were kept on codices or tabulae.
These tabulae were used in courts to settle business disputes as the money-changers were often used in business transactions to make payments.
He made a vow to build the temple of in the war of Philippi, which he undertook to avenge his fathers; accordingly he decreed that in it the senate should consider wars and claims for triumphs, from it those who were on their way to the provinces with military commands should be escorted,and to it victors on their return should bear the tokens of their triumphs.
He prepared the temple of Apollo in that part of his house on the Palatine for which the soothsayers declared that the god had shown his desire by striking it with lightning.
He joined to it colonnades with Latin and Greek libraries, and when he was getting to be an old man he often held meetings of the senate there as well, and revised the lists of jurors.
He constructed some works too in the name of others, his grandsons and nephew to wit, his wife and his sister, such as the colonnade and basilica of Gaius and Lucius; also the colonnades of Livia andOctavia, and the theater of Marcellus.
More than that, he often urged other prominent men to adorn the city with new monuments or to restore and embellish old ones, each according to his means.
And many such works were built at that time by many men; for example,the temple of Hercules and the Muses by Marcius Philippus, the temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius, the Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollio, the temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus, a theatre by Cornelius Balbus, an amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus, and by Marcus Agrippa, in particular many magnificent structures.
Rome stayed quiet for the first 4 years of Augustus rule, then in 23 BC events took a critical turn. A series of disasters convince the people, that Augustus needed not less power, but more. The city was flooded by the overflowing river and many things were struck by lightning.
Then a plague passed through Italy and no one could work the land.
The Romans thought these misfortunes were caused by Augustus since, had relinquished his office. They wished to appoint him dictator.
A mob barricaded the Senate inside its building and threatening to burn them alive!
This forced the Senate to vote. – now Augustus was an absolute ruler.
The public demands and threatens to unsettle the Emperor’s precarious political balance.
Knowing an opportunity, when he one – Augustus fell to his knees before the rioters. he tore his toga, beat his chest and promised the mob that he would personally take control of the grain supply, but Augustus refused to be called a dictator.
The crowd disbanded, but the lesson was clear – Augustus was riding a paper tiger to keep order on the frontiers, the streets, and the senate.
It was a” superhuman” task and “superhuman skills” were needed.
Luckily for Rome, Augustus (had) them.
Then something very fortuitous happens – Halley’s Comet shows up.
The word is ,given out by Augustus this is the soul of Julius Caesar ascending into heaven, so from this point on he is called Julius Caesar the divine,
Politically it became very potent, because Augustus at this point has all his coinage on all his writings and all his symbols DF, son of the Divine.
It’s really was quite an asset.
Augustus enhanced his pious new identity with stories of his lean habits.
It was said, that he lived in a modest house and slept on a low bed that he ate common foods coarse bread common cheese and ,sometimes even less.
He believed that its future ran through its past through the restoration of values he thought had first made Rome great I renewed the many traditions which were fading in age, restored 82 temples of the gods, neglecting none that required repair at the time in public.
Augustus led by example he sacrificed animals in traditional rituals and he re-established traditional social rules, new laws assigned theater seats by social rank
– women were confined to the back rows adultery was outlawed, marriage and children encouraged to many.
Roman society had recovered its true course the son of a god was building an empire for the ages.
Who can find words to adequately describe the advancements of these years authority, returned to the government majesty to the Senate?
Influence to the courts protests in the theater have been stopped. Integrity is honored. Depravity is punished, but amid the applause, there were also cries of protest.
The emperor’s new traditionalism rankled friends and enemies alike, it even rankled his own.
He divided the area of the city into regions and wards, arranging that the former should be under the charge of magistrates (local government citizens, for example of modern time a mayor) selected each year by lot, and the latter under “masters” elected by the inhabitants of the respective neighborhoods.
Guard s against fires, were devised a system of stations of night watchmen, and to control. He also widened and cleared out the channel of the Tiber, which had for some time been filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting buildings to guard against floods.
Further, to make the approach to the city easier from every direction, he personally undertook to rebuild the Flaminian Road all the way to Ariminum, and assigned the rest of the high-ways to others who had been honored with triumphs, asking them to use their prize-money in paving them.
He was not indifferent to his own dreams or to those which others dreamed about him. At the battle of Philippi, though he had made up his mind not to leave his tent because of illness, but he did so, after all when warned by a friend’s dream; fortunately, as it turned out, for his camp was taken and when the enemy rushed in, his litter was stabbed through and through and torn to pieces, in the belief that he was still lying there ill.
All through the spring his own dreams were very numerous and fearful, but idle and unfulfilled; during the rest of the year they were less frequent and more reliable.
Being in the habit of making constant visits to the temple of Jupiter, the Thunderer, which he had founded on the Capitol, he dreamed that Jupiter Capitolinus complained that his worshipers were being taken from him, and that he answered.
Augustus placed the Thunderer hard, by to be his doorkeeper; and accordingly he presently festooned the gable of the temple with bells, because these commonly hung at house-doors.
It was likewise, because of a dream that every year on an appointed day he begged alms of the people, holding out his open hand to have pennies dropped in it.
Certain auspices and omens he regarded as infallible.
If his shoes were put on in the wrong way in the morning, the left instead of the right, he considered it a bad sign.
If there chanced to be a drizzle of rain when he was starting on a long journey by land or sea, he thought it a good omen, betokening a speedy and prosperous return.
But he was especially affected by prodigies. (an amazing or unusual thing, especially one out of the ordinary course of nature).
He was so pleased that the branches of an old oak, which had already drooped to the ground and were withering, became vigorous again on his arrival in the island of Capreae, that he arranged with the city of Naples to give him the island in exchange for Aenaria. in the latter case, as he writes Tiberius, he merely dreaded the unlucky sound of the name.
He treated with great respect such foreign rites as were ancient and well established, but held the rest in contempt.
For example, having been initiated at Athens and afterwards sitting in judgment of a case at Rome involving the privileges of the priests.
Certain matters of secrecy were brought up.
He dismissed his counselors and the throng of bystanders and heard the disputants in private.
But on the other hand he not only omitted to make a slight detour to visit Apis, when he was travelling through Egypt, but highly commended his grandson Gaius for not offering prayers at Jerusalem as he passed by Judaea.
On the last day of his life he asked every now and then whether there was any disturbance without on his account; then calling for a mirror, he had his hair combed and his falling jaws set straight.
After that, calling in his friends and asking whether it seemed to them that he had played the comedy of life fitly, he added the tag:
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““Since well I’ve played my part, all clap your hands And from the stage dismiss me with applause. |
Then he sent them all off, and while he was asking some newcomers from the city about the daughter of Drusus, who was ill, he suddenly passed away as he was kissing Livia, uttering these last words:
“Live mindful of our wedlock, Livia, and farewell,”
Thus blessed with an easy death and such a one as he had always longed for, always on hearing that anyone had died swiftly and painlessly, by euthanasia because it was the term he liked.
He gave but one single sign of wandering before he breathed his last, calling out in sudden terror that 40 men were carrying him off.
And even this was rather a premonition, than a delusion, since it was that very number of soldiers of the Praetorian guard that carried him forth to lie in state.
He died in the same room as his father Octavius, in the consulship of two Sextuses, Pompeius and Appuleius‘ fourteenth day before the Kalends of September at the ninth hour, just 35 days before his 76th birthday.