Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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What if Julius Caesar was not assassinated on the Ides of March? Just how different would ancient history, would history today look? It's a fascinating thing to think about that many people have thought about over the centuries. Now, this is the first time on The Ancients we've ever done one of these hypothetical scenarios and delve deep into theories of what could have happened next.
And we'd love to hear what you think of it. If you enjoy this style of episode, we'll certainly look to do more in the future. Now, let's get into it. The 15th of March, 44 BC. The Ides of March.
Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, 55 years old, has just arrived outside the gleaming stone theatre of his old rival Pompey, a monumental marble complex and the location of that day's important Senate meetings. Hundreds of senators, the elite of the Roman Republic, have gathered for it.
They are keen to see and petition Caesar before he leaves Rome on a military expedition to the east, a war of revenge against the Parthians, a chance for Caesar to emulate his hero Alexander. But first, he has to attend this meeting. and the omens supposedly had not been good. Before he had even left his house, his wife Calpurnia begs him not to go, fearing a plot.
Then en route, he spots a soothsayer who had already told him to beware this day. Caesar had cast aside both these warnings and several more, Undeterred, he enters the meeting room, where hundreds of senators await him, dozens of conspirators in their midst. Concerned at Caesar's growing power, acting like a king in all but name, these disillusioned senators have decided to act alone.
As Caesar lowers himself regally on his throne, the signal is given. The conspirators leap forward, drawing their daggers concealed in their togas and delivering blow after violent, frenzied blow, staining Caesar's purple robe blood red. Twenty-three stab wounds later, Caesar collapses, unable to speak, near the statue of Pompey and breathes his last. His great ambitions and life cut short.
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Chapter 2: What if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated on the Ides of March?
That was the famous or infamous end of Julius Caesar. An assassination that would prove the death knell for the Roman Republic, but... What if he had survived the Ides? What if this assassination attempt had never happened? Or what if it had failed? What would have happened next for Julius Caesar, the Roman Empire and the ancient world?
To discuss this fascinating alternate history with me is Dr. Hannah Cornwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History at Birmingham University. Hannah, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. It's great to be back and to talk about someone who I think we both have an interest in. And there's a lot to talk about. There is, isn't it?
I love once in a while doing these kind of alternate history ones. What if moments? What if Caesar hadn't been assassinated? Because it feels like this is something that they even discussed in ancient times. You know, one of those big moments. What if the Ides of March hadn't happened? Absolutely. And the Ides of March has such... currency, I think, even for us today.
I think most listeners, if not all, will have probably heard beware the Ides of March, thanks to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. But it was also something that the ancients, after Caesar's assassination, spoilers, That happened.
What we're also talking about, and it was a sort of concept for them, Cicero, about 11 months after Caesar had been killed, wrote a letter to Cassius, one of the assassins or liberators, saying, I wish you had invited me to that banquet on the Ides of March. There would have been nothing left. Cicero saying, I would have ate and left no crumbs. I wanted to be there.
I wanted to be part of that moment in history. But Cicero hadn't been invited. He hadn't known about the plan to assassinate Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. But Brutus himself, two years after the assassination, was minting coins with his head on the obverse, the head side of the coin, and on the reverse, the tail side of the coin.
He commemorates the date, which is really unusual in ancient coins. And the picture on that side of the coin is two daggers, either side of Friedman's cap. So he's saying this was an act of tyrannicide to liberate the Republic.
It's interesting that you mentioned those big names, of course, on that side of the fence, as it were, those who were involved in wanting to remove Julius Caesar and who ultimately did. Just also, you mentioned that Cicero calls it a banquet. I'm guessing that's just colourful language for the multiple stabbings of Caesar in the room near the Senate House. Yes.
He's imagining it as this sort of almost not quite a party, but something that was a sort of a moment to be celebrated and almost enjoyed. Which is a very macabre way of thinking about it, because you're absolutely right. What happens on the Ides of March, which is just the Roman way of saying the 15th of March, the middle of the month.
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Chapter 3: What were Julius Caesar's ambitions before the Ides of March?
I wouldn't count your chickens just yet. Exactly. And Suetonius, alongside recording the account of the soothsayer, also talks about Caesar's wife Calpurnia having a dream, dreams the Romans portend the future. She dreams that the pediment of the house crashes down and that he is sort of killed in the rubble. So there are supposedly portents warning of what will happen on this day.
But come the 15th of March, the Senate is gathered in the Curia, the Senate House of Pompey on the Campus Martius. And Caesar, when he woke up in the morning, apparently was suffering from a bout of ill health, which he had been suffering of late in later life. Which is interesting, very interesting in its own right. Indeed, yeah.
But he is persuaded by one of the conspirators to attend the Senate. They're all waiting. They want to hear him. And he gets there about 11 o'clock, slightly late in the day, because obviously he's had a late start. The Senate meeting starts as normal. He's seated in the curial chair as the magistrate.
And one of the conspirators approaches him and sort of touches his toga, at which point this frenzy begins. We're told there were about 60 plus conspirators.
individuals who were part of the conspiracy but suetonius tells us that there were 23 stab wounds on his body but only one apparently according to the doctor who subsequently examined him was was fatal so it just took one blow though isn't it yes and it's also i always find interesting this point that isn't it something that the senate the whole of the senate was some like 900 members it was several hundred members and actually only 60 of them were conspirators so actually in the larger scheme of things it's only a small amount but it was enough
Yeah, that's a really good point, Tristan, because yes, Caesar had expanded the Senate to 900, filling it with a number of his supporters. And I suppose it's important to remember that he counted individuals like Brutus and Cassius as his supporters. He had them lined up for magistracies and public positions in the coming years. But yes, it's only a fraction.
It's a minority of the Senate that we know were involved, as I mentioned earlier, Cicero himself, who was still a prominent
political figure apparently had no inkling about what was going to happen on the 15th of march well let's explore then what caesar's world looks like around that time just before he is assassinated so we can then move into the question of what if it doesn't happen for one reason or another so you mentioned already that caesar well he's a consul at this time so he's very very powerful but how powerful is he i mean what is his actual position what is his status in what is still at that time the roman republic
So, yes, Caesar is one of two consuls. And it's really important to understand Republican structures at Rome in terms of constitutional matters is that there is never meant to be one individual in charge of the state lording it over everyone else. You always have two consuls, even though they alternate the months that they're sort of overseeing affairs. So Mark Antony was... Caesar's co-consul.
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Chapter 4: How did Caesar's assassination impact the Roman Republic?
But of course, we're reading this through a lot later sources. And someone like Suetonius, an imperial biographer, loves gossip, loves scandal. But it's interesting that supposedly it has come down to him in the historic record that there are these graffiti images
political statements in public that are kind of calling Caesar out potentially and as you mentioned earlier with that famous scene in the Lupercalia where it seems like some are okay with him potentially doing it others aren't so it's interesting to see how much truth there is in that split opinion idea but this is all really important for getting a good sense of Caesar's position around the time of the Ides of March and Hannah we do know what he was planning next and
So what is Caesar's situation around, let's say, mid-March 44 BC? What is he aiming to do? So he is aiming on the 18th of March to leave Rome and to march east. Three days later, right. Yeah, exactly. He has plans. He has plans. We know Caesar as a fantastic military general. He's conquered Gaul. He's been successful in Spain. He's put down numerous internal conflicts across the Mediterranean.
The one thing still standing that Rome has not managed to do is to conquer Parthia. Now, Parthia is a kingdom to the east or an empire to the east of the Euphrates. which Rome has had intermittent contact with since the beginning of the first century BC, but have never successfully conquered.
It was a goal of Pompey the Great to sort of wrap up his sort of imperial world conquest by conquering Parthia, but he never did. And Rome had suffered previous defeats and setbacks. So particularly under Crassus in 54 and 53, devastating defeat by the Parthians.
Rome's concern about its eastern frontiers, if we can talk about that, or its eastern provinces, from the possibility of a Parthian threat, plus Caesar's desire to be that world conqueror, to do one better than Pompey and other great generals of the past, is driving him towards his Parthian campaign. And we know that this was meant to be a three-year campaign,
Legions had already been sent out to Macedonia and he's all set to go. He had made plans for the administration of the Roman state in his absence as dictator. He still had that right. And so he has basically pre-appointed, pre-selected the various annual magistracies for the next three years.
And people like Brutus and Cassius are given public positions, which they take up after his assassination. They're quite happy to sort of say, yes, we'll be senior magistrates now that we've gotten rid of you, thanks to you giving us these positions. So his plan was to go out, campaign for three years, might have been extended, might have not.
And with the assurance that the city of Rome and its administration were being taken care of by people he trusted. And yet he's still, yes, he's general in the field. He's away from Rome, but he still has that title of dictator. So he's still the big man, but he's going back on his expeditions to the east. And a couple of things from what you mentioned there. So Parthia, Euphrates River.
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Chapter 5: What were the conspirators' motivations for assassinating Caesar?
that almost innate Roman drive, that competitive drive for military glory.
And no doubt that sort of personality type that drives towards military success that Caesar evidently possessed versus the need to kind of ensure stability for the state, which he was aware of because obviously he'd fought civil wars against, you know, fellow citizens, which was massively disruptive to not just the stability of Rome as a political, uh,
entity but to the entire Mediterranean I guess that's right isn't it that's another fun thing to consider the further east he would have gone the more potential there could have been for instability at home or even Gaul or somewhere or you know either rivals you know who'd stay quiet in the senate or if they've if there was no item march plot at the time with Cassius and the like could they have risen up in Rome itself when he's so far away like
I think there's a precedent with Sulla and Marius doing the same kind of thing when Sulla's away and Marius in Rome. So it's funny to consider that, like if he'd gone further and further east or gone that way, is there more chance of instability and an uprising at Rome in the west? Absolutely.
And I think, Tristan, that if he was to push further east, but still maintain this position of dictator perpetuo, sending back commentaries on his great glorious eastern campaigns, that's not going to dissuade those who are managing the rest of Rome, that he's not a king. It doesn't remove the problem that initiates the Ides of March conspiracy in the first place, right?
It removes him from their presence. But we know from his Gallic Wars that his imminent return was one of the things, the concern about what Caesar was going to do, coming back to Italy from Gaul, is what drives the the war between him and Pompey to start in the first place. So would we have just had another civil war when he came back from the East? In a world where swords were sharp.
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Last one on the military campaigns, and then I'd like to ask about his health, and then we'll explore some key characters as well. Like, of course, Cleopatra. You mentioned kind of conquering the whole world idea, which is a pretty big idea, pretty big ambition for Caesar, the known world.
But would that have also meant that he would have wanted to conquer the Great Steppe north of the Black Sea as well? The land of Sivia? You know, even more horse archers up there? Another Bane of Rome? I mean, and Amazonian women fighters as well? I mean, what do we think?
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