The Story Of Julius Caesar's Murder | Tony Robinson's Romans: Julius Caesar Pt 2 | Timeline

How can someone be hugely popular, hero worshipped as a brilliant general and reformer, yet hated enough to be killed by the people who knew him best? That's the enigma thrown up by the mythic figure of Julius Caesar. So I've come here to Rome to try to find something of the complex character who by 55 BC had made as many enemies as he'd won over. He was 45 years old, he'd had five swashbuckling years away from home. Indeed, it was only the diplomatic immunity of his foreign posting that stood between him and prosecution in Rome, because he'd only got to the top through bribery and corruption. Over the next 16 years, he'd fight a civil war, he'd have a passionate affair with Cleopatra, he'd take on the mantle of emperor, and finally, he'd meet his destiny and the assassin's knife on the Ides of March. As he approached 50, Caesar looked back on an epic career achieved through ruthless ambition, relentless work, and a strange mixture of charm and brutality. In getting to the top, he'd already travelled thousands of miles. As governor of Gaul, he'd fought a brilliant campaign, cutting his way through northern Europe, and then publicised his victories in his own books, The Gallic Wars. But he had to stay in Gaul because of the charge of corruption he faced back in Rome. He'd formed an alliance with the other two great Romans of the age, Pompey the Great and Marcus Crassus. As part of the so-called Triumvirate, Caesar had ridden roughshod over the Senate. His methods led to the charges of corruption, and meant he had to keep away from Rome. Now, everything he'd done over the last five years was beginning to unravel. Caesar thought he'd conquered Gaul, but the Gallic tribes were rebelling. As Caesar crushed one revolt, another broke out. In 52 BC, the problem became a crisis. For the first time, Caesar met a really dangerous opponent. A charismatic young Gallic prince was uniting the disparate tribes. His name was Vercingetorix. In the 19th century, Vercingetorix became a symbol of French independence. They put up this massive statue to celebrate the man who first brought the people of Gaul together. At the time, the Gauls had no sense of being one nation, but they all hated the Romans. In Vercingetorix, they had someone who knew how to fight like Caesar. He'd actually served in Caesar's cavalry. He knew that the Romans' main asset was Caesar himself. The rebellion started in winter. Caesar was here in northern Italy, keeping in touch with politics in Rome. His main forces were spread across northern Gaul. But Vercingetorix was rousing the tribes here in the middle of Gaul. If Caesar ordered his main force south, they might have to fight the enemy without him in charge. With Vercingetorix commanding the valleys and the mountain passes blocked with snow, Caesar seemed powerless. If you want to understand Caesar, you need to think like him. One, anything is possible. Two, do what the enemy least expects. He only had a small bunch of raw recruits, but he ordered them to dig a route through a pass that was two meters deep in snow. Not only that, but they did it in 24 hours. They broke through, and even though it was such a tiny force, they completely panicked the enemy. It was an act of strategic brilliance. Vercingetorix retreated rapidly to the safety of the Auvergne, and this bought Caesar time to head west, reunite with the main force, and attack the rebels. But Vercingetorix wasn't finished. He was on home ground, and he used the weather and the terrain to his advantage. For the first time, Caesar found himself outmaneuvered. Caesar crossed and recrossed the land, trying to subdue rebel tribes by hitting at their strongholds. But Vercingetorix harried his extended supply lines, rarely giving battle. Then he made his first and last mistake. He allowed Caesar to trap him into a direct confrontation. It took place here, at what is now Alize-Saint-Ren. 2,000 years ago, you would have seen the great ramparts of Alizea, a massive Gallic hillfort. Vercingetorix had botched an attack on Caesar's cavalry, and was forced to withdraw here with his 80,000 men. As Caesar closed the net, Vercingetorix sent out a desperate call for reinforcements. Vercingetorix and his men were crammed into the fort on the top of the hill over there, along with the men, women, and children who lived there. And when his reinforcements arrived, they set up on that hill over there, up to a quarter of a million of them. So Caesar's 70,000 legionaries in the valley down there were hopelessly outnumbered, and they'd got two problems. They needed to keep Vercingetorix in, and keep the relieving forces out. The solution? Another vast engineering feat. They completely surrounded the town with two immense lines of fortifications. First, an inner wall to stop anyone getting out, then another wall on the outside to defend from outer attack. In these infrared photographs, you can still clearly see the two lines. But it meant the Romans were spread terribly thin. It wasn't clear who was besieging who. Alesia was make or break. There were no half measures with Caesar, and no mercy for the Gauls trapped in the hillfort. The food ran out. One of Vercingetorix's lieutenants suggested they kill the old people and eat them. Vercingetorix overruled him, and sent all the civilians, men, women and children, down the hill to avoid the final conflict. Caesar refused to let them through, and they starved to death here in no man's land. Alesia is a terrific danger, it must be said. It's a very big force inside the hillfort, and there's an even bigger force that's coming to the relief. There's a very big army on both sides. Caesar's going to have to fight on both sides at once. Yeah, it's a terrific risk, but there's terrific amounts to gain as well, because if he can win this one, it will be clear that he is the master of Gaul. The Romans, stretched over 10 miles of defences, were outnumbered nearly five to one. For four solid days, the Gauls and the Romans slogged it out. It could have gone either way. Then Caesar himself led a surprise assault, and the Gauls collapsed. After the surrender, Vercingetorix was taken to Rome in chains, to await his fate. Every Roman who'd survived was given a prisoner to keep or sell as a slave. There was still mopping up to do, but Alesia broke the back of resistance. All Gaul was now Roman territory. Caesar had rewritten the map of Rome's dominions. The great Gallic hillforts, like Alesia, were replaced with Roman settlements. Miniature Romes, with their own forum and temple, nice and neat. Thanks to Caesar, the French have a Latin language, and Europe is a classical, not a Celtic, culture. Caesar had surpassed the achievements of Rome's greatest living general, his ally Pompey. But Pompey didn't like that. They were heading for a showdown. By the time he'd conquered Gaul, Caesar was in his late forties. After years of hard campaigning, he was tough, thin and fit, although he suffered from mild epilepsy. He was also vain. He was so embarrassed by his thinning black hair, that he'd started to comb it forward from the back, to cover the bald patch like a Roman comb-over. But the major crisis of his middle age was only too real. Back in Rome, things hadn't been going so sweetly. Caesar had survived so far because of his alliance with the millionaire Crassus and the great general Pompey, but now relations had grown strained and broken. Crassus had been killed on campaign in Asia, while another death had shattered Caesar's alliance with Pompey. Pompey had married Caesar's only daughter. The two men were united by their devotion to her, but she died in childbirth. The grieving Pompey became distant. He was jealous of Caesar's success and threatened by his military might. He'd been happy to help Caesar's career, but not at the expense of Rome's interests. The rivalry soon degenerated into gang warfare, fought out on the streets by hired thugs. The Senate split into factions, lining up behind two massive egos, each with their own army at their disposal. In 50 BC, the crisis reached boiling point. Caesar's time in Gaul was up. The consuls demanded that he return to Rome, lay down his post and face the charges that had been hanging over his head for 10 years. Rome waited to see how Caesar would react. He was a brooding presence, waiting with his forces on Italy's northern border. If he was to resign everything, he would be a private citizen and open to attack for all of his actions. He could be attacked for his actions in 59 BC as consul because they were illegal, and all of his actions in waging war in Gaul aren't entirely given the rubber stamp of approval by the Senate and people of Rome. They're not completely legal. He could also be tried for extortion. So, in a way, he has really one choice, which is, if he's going to stay in command of this vast army, is to actually just take it with him to Rome. The boundary between Caesar's province and Roman soil, where troops weren't allowed, was the river Rubicon. If he stayed north of the river, Caesar retained the power base of his army. As soon as he crossed south, he'd automatically become a private citizen, and if he brought his troops with him, he'd be committing treason against the Roman people. By crossing the Rubicon, Caesar would give us not one, but two phrases meaning no going back. Caesar could have ducked out of the fight. He could have obeyed the law. He could have avoided the death of the many, many Roman citizens who fought each other over the next six years, but he didn't. His sense of his own destiny prevailed. On the 11th of January, 49 BC, he arrived at this little bridge just before dawn in a closed carriage. The rest of his men had gone on ahead. Even now, he could have avoided the conflict. He thought for a moment, and then he said, Alia iacta est. The die is cast. He crossed the bridge. And when he got to here, he was at war. The bitter conflict would last five years and cover thousands of miles, but Caesar started as the second favourite. He had his own troops, but Pompey, with the blessing of the Senate, had the bulk of the Roman army and the navy. But the sudden ferocity of Caesar's move spooked his enemies. As he stormed south, advancing on Rome, his reputation alone was enough to cause panic. Pompey evacuated his troops and fled to the port of Brindisium to escape to Greece, while Caesar came home. He hadn't been to Rome for nine years, but neither he nor the Senate had changed much during that time. As a matter of form, he requested funds for the prosecution of his war against Pompey, and when they refused, he broke into the treasury and simply helped himself. Pompey had gone to Greece. Caesar moved 600 miles in the opposite direction to Spain, trying to ensure that he wouldn't be outflanked by Pompey's legion stationed there. Once he'd quelled Pompey's troops there, he made the gruelling return and, ignoring advice, crossed to Greece during the winter storms to make an assault on Pompey. The crucial difference was to be the character of the generals themselves. Caesar, sharp and battle-hardened, had utterly loyal troops. In contrast, Pompey hadn't seen active service for 12 years. He was 56, suffering from a stomach ulcer. Caesar came close to defeat in a series of clashes on the west coast, but Pompey let him escape to the central plains. Caesar told his men, you've survived because you're fighting a man who doesn't know how to grasp victory. Here, outside the town of Pharsalus, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar had their showdown. Pompey's forces were arrayed under the hills to the west. Caesar faced him with his back to Pharsalus. Amid the cornfields of Greece, Roman died at the hand of Roman. Pompey was soundly beaten and fled, leaving 6,000 dead and 24,000 prisoners. He was victorious, but Caesar knew the real battle was for the hearts and minds of the Roman people. At the beginning of the Civil War, Pompey declared, everyone who's not with me is against me. Caesar, on the other hand, is said to have said, everyone who's not against me, actively, is with me. And that's a good example of Caesar's political awareness because what he did there was open up a way to forgiveness. Caesar took most of the captured into his own ranks. He didn't know it yet, but this policy of mercy was to prove fatal. Among the captured officers he spared was Marcus Junius Brutus, the son of Caesar's favourite mistress and the man who would have him killed. But Pompey himself had got away. Word reached Caesar that he was fleeing south across the Mediterranean. The sensible thing would have been to consolidate his position and return home. But the fight with Pompey had become a vendetta. He set off in hot pursuit against his enemy, and they both ended up here in Alexandria. Pompey came seeking asylum, but the Egyptians knew who'd won and stabbed him in front of his wife when he was being rowed ashore. A few days later, Caesar arrived and was presented with the embalmed head of his enemy and his signet ring. Caesar might have thought the affair was over. In fact, it had just begun. He'd stepped into a political milestone. Exotic Egypt was run by the Ptolemy dynasty. Because the royal family were thought to be living gods, the rulers were always a brother and sister who married each other and ruled jointly, although each kept a separate palace. Incest didn't make them fond of each other. There were fierce struggles to get the upper hand. When Caesar arrived in 47 BC, the child king, Ptolemy XIII, was fighting a civil war against his older sister. At the time, the king had the upper hand. He invited Caesar to the palace as his guest. He wanted to ensure that the man who was now the most powerful Roman alive would be his ally. A few days later, Caesar had an unusual visitor. A male attendant came in with a laundry sack over his shoulder. He dropped it on the floor, opened it, and out popped the queen. She'd come to enlist Caesar's help against the king, her brother. To a man with a roving eye like Caesar's, this was big-time trouble. In front of him, exotic and available, was Cleopatra. It's been said that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face of the world might have been different. 200 years after her time, she was the most beautiful woman alive, people say. But the statues that we have and the coins that we have suggest that what Plutarch says about her is closer to the truth. What Plutarch says, it wasn't so much that she was beautiful, it was simply her charm. It was the way she talked to people. That's what made her so captivating. That's what really brought man after man with whom she talked into her spell. And the way she looked, well, love stories tend always to turn the woman into the most beautiful woman alive. She didn't need to be the most beautiful woman alive to achieve what she achieved. She was 20, he was 52. There was no real reason for him to stay in Egypt, but he fell for Cleopatra's seductive charms and decided to support her instead of her brother. Caesar found himself besieged with Cleopatra in her palace. The war, if you could call it that, was a desperate struggle all fought round this harbour area of Alexandria, with both sides trying to get possession of the causeway that ran out to the lighthouse. After sending for reinforcements, Caesar tried to set fire to the Egyptian fleet, but ended up burning the city's ancient library. In another clash, he had to jump into the sea to save his life. Kicking off his heavy clothes, he swam back to safety, apparently still holding some important documents above the water to keep them dry. He nearly lost. Caesar risked his reputation and his life for Cleopatra. The seas shifted since Caesar's day and the palace where he stayed is submerged in the harbour. Now, archaeologists have begun to reclaim some of the treasures that Caesar must have seen daily. With Caesar's help, Cleopatra was the winner of the war. Once reinforcements arrived, there was a decisive confrontation. Cleopatra's enemies were routed. Caesar installed her as queen. The new king, and Cleopatra's official husband, was her 11-year-old brother. But the baby Cleopatra had later that year was called Caesarion, after his father. Proof of what seems to have been a genuine love story. Because even after the politics were done, Caesar couldn't bear to leave Egypt. He joined Cleopatra on a romantic cruise down the Nile. Caesar's affair with the Egyptian queen has fascinated people down the centuries, but she gave him a dangerous taste of what it was really like to be a king. As they relaxed on their two-month honeymoon cruise down the Nile, he must have felt he was invincible. He'd conquered the world, he'd won Cleopatra, but it was cold, hard politics that would kill him. When he returned to his wife and affairs of state in Rome, he had no idea that three years later, he'd be facing the assassin's knife. Caesar marched back home in triumph up the Appian Way, but he hadn't come straight from Egypt. Typically, when he left Cleopatra's arms, he diverted to northern Turkey, where he fought a lightning and devastating campaign against a king who'd been trying to invade the empire. In a life crowned with military success, he'd surpassed himself. To celebrate, he wrote one of the most famous sayings of all time, I came, I saw, I conquered. A brilliant epigram from a brilliant man, but unfortunately not his own. That form of expression is not at all unusual. We can find parallels in Roman comedy, came, we saw, we went away again. The Greek philosopher, Democritus, said something about the whole of life as being like that. We came, we lived, we went away again. What's new about what Caesar does is that instead of coming, seeing, and going away, it's I came, I saw, and I conquered. This was early PR. Caesar wasn't content with mere achievement. He wanted to create his own myth at the same time. Rome is increasingly a political scene where propaganda or images, image building of one sort or another, is becoming more and more important. And the idea of Caesar, the one who's beloved of his army, the man who's always so quick, Caesariana Caleritas on the battlefield, the one who carries all before him, the man who has just got winner printed on the middle of his forehead, that is very much a Caesar creation. As soon as he got back to Rome, he wrote up his own account of the civil war, playing on his mercy and his willingness to unite the peoples of Rome. And he threw the party to end all parties. A returning general was often given an official celebration called a triumph. Caesar had four, all at the same time, parading the trophies of his many victories. Rome had never seen anything like it. Caesar's legions marched in triumph, singing vulgar songs about their oversexed general. Home we bring our bald whoremonger, Romans, lock your wives away. All that foreign gold you gave him went his Gallic whores to pay. Formed insults that you only get after years of affection and respect. It wasn't just a show. It was prize money for the troops, a public feast with 22,000 tables groaning with food. Gladiators fought to the death, athletes ran and wrestled, actors performed. As a special treat, Vercingetorix, who'd been saved up for eight years, was paraded in chains before being taken away and strangled quietly in prison. No one Roman had ever been so powerful and so popular as Julius Caesar. The Roman Republic was a democracy. But for years, there'd been a stalemate between charismatic individuals like Caesar, who wanted reform, and conservatives, who wanted to keep the status quo. The scale of Caesar's military success and his public acclaim gave him a popular mandate for a radical change. In the Senate, he swept all before him. He was still supposed to be the first amongst equals. In practice, his power base let him ride roughshod over the opposition. Caesar rubbed senators' noses in his dominance, attaching their names to bills without their consent. People found themselves credited with putting measures forward when they hadn't even attended the Senate. Everyone is frightened about the future. Where is this going to take us? And the people who say, you've got to change things, cause great alarm to all the vested interests. And when you consider that two centuries of conquest have created an enormous accumulation of vested interests, of people with land and estates and money and so on, and they're all hoping to pass them on to their children, and they don't want a new political order. So, one man, one of their number, rising to supreme power, is a terrible threat. Caesar was a one-man revolution. His reforms solved the problems in Rome and made the empire a reality. Rome was overcrowded and there were thousands of retired soldiers without a pension. Caesar simply took 80,000 people out of the city and resettled them in new towns abroad, where he also gave land to army veterans. By making Romans settle in Gaul or Spain, he started to turn them from conquered countries into a true part of the Roman system. And he reformed the Senate, expanding the number of senators to include people from the provinces, so that they too could have a say in how things were run. One of the jokes that went around Rome was, if you see a guy in trousers, don't point him the way to the Senate, because a guy in trousers is going to be a Gaul and they're saying, you know, he's even appointing these barbarian Gauls to our Senate. Now, that's an exaggeration, but behind that lies, if you have fought an enormous campaign in Gaul and you've recruited part of your army from Gaul, you will indeed promote the successful officers up the system. He also drained marshes, imposed a tax on luxury goods, reduced unemployment and made laws of religious toleration across the empire. All good, solid, respectable civic stuff, but Caesar's most lasting achievement was made with the help of Cleopatra's astronomers, who trained here at the great library at Alexandria. He invented July. Before Caesar, the Roman year was too short. Their 12 months followed the phases of the moon and were only 28 days long. Every so often, they had to put in an extra month to make up, but during the chaos of the civil war, Midsummer Day had fallen in September. Caesar understood astronomy. He knew the year should be 365 days long. He divided up the extra days between the 12 months. To get things right, he stretched time. Between November and December 46 BC, he put in two extra months. Then, on the 1st of January 45 BC, his new 365-day calendar started. With minor modifications, it's what we have today. To mark his achievement, the month that contained his birthday was called July. Then, in the middle of all this activity, Cleopatra herself arrived in Rome with her 12-year-old husband and Caesar's baby. Nothing shows Caesar's high-handed attitude more than the way he handled her visit. He erected a statue of Cleopatra in the temple of Venus the mother. This was blasphemy. Having a girlfriend was one thing. Asking Romans to treat her like a goddess was another. By 45 BC, discontent was seeping round the Roman elite. Caesar's military enemies still had power. The civil war was threatening to break out again in Spain. He'd already had to fight in North Africa the year before, putting down a resurgence of Pompey's supporters there. Now Pompey's sons, wanting to avenge their father, were assembling an army near Cordoba. Once more, Caesar rallied his troops for what was to be his last campaign. It's 2,400 kilometres from Rome to Cordoba. Caesar did it in just 27 days. In fact, he got there before either the enemy or his own men knew he was coming. The final battle of the civil war was one of Caesar's most desperate struggles. It took place just north of Cadiz, at Munda. The two sets of professional Roman soldiers were locked together in classic fashion when suddenly the unthinkable happened. Caesar's veterans began to give way and fall back, leaving a gap between the two armies. Caesar jumped off his horse, threw away his helmet, picked up a shield and marched up and down the line, dodging enemy javelins and shouting, if I'm done for, then you're done for too. When his tribunes saw how exposed he was, they formed round him and then the legions rallied. When the battle was won, Caesar admitted that he'd contemplated suicide when he saw his men begin to fall back. I fought for victory before, he said, but I've never fought for my own life. The civil war was over. By the age of 55, Caesar had such power that the Republic could barely fit him into the existing democracy. The Senate tried to fit the system to the man, giving him the highest office of consul for not one, but 10 years. Caesar also took an honorary title, which has immense significance. This is the room of the emperors at the Capitoline Museum. They're all here, Nero, Augustus, Caligula, but they wouldn't be called emperors if it hadn't been for Julius Caesar. His soldiers loved him and gave him the unofficial title of Imperator, or emperor. He hijacked the name and used it as a permanent title so that ever after, the boss of Rome and its dominions was known as the emperor. Surely, in a sense, Caesar must be the first emperor. Imperator is just one of the many titles which these people used, and he was the first Imperator Kaiser. Do you think that Caesar was aware that he was creating something new? Yes, he must have been aware, not least because everyone was telling him at the time, you are destroying the old system, you don't want to do this. But he knows that the world has changed in a very significant way and that he has to set a new model. Caesar wasn't the sort of character who could play a diplomatic game. One day, a deputation came to him to tell him about the latest batch of honours the Senate had awarded him. They were standing, he didn't get up. This implied he was superior in rank to his fellow senators, a great insult. His excuse was that he had diarrhoea and didn't dare move, but it was noted that he still managed to walk home. Then in February 44 BC, Caesar was declared dictator. Dictators were usually temporary one-man rulers who were appointed to sort out emergencies. Caesar was given the post for life. There was now officially one man more important than his fellow citizens. There'd been dictators before, like Sulla, who predicted that Caesar would bring down the entire system, but none had ever had the cult of personality associated with them until Caesar. Look at this coin. It was minted in 44 BC, and that head is Caesar. This is the last year of Caesar's life, and it was the very first time that any Roman coin had had the portrait of a living person on it. What hubris. And see this one. This was minted two years later, and on it there's a pair of daggers and a cap which symbolises liberty, and these two words, three words, the Ides of March. By 44 BC, Julius Caesar was 56 years old. After disregarding the niceties of Roman democracy, he was now a king in all but name. Romans hated the very word king. 600 years before, there'd been seven kings of Rome, and the last, Tarquin, had been such a tyrant, they'd got rid of him and set up the Republic instead. They never forgot what a disaster kingship would be. In fact, when people tried to call Caesar king, he rejected the title, but he'd already gone too far in establishing one-person rule. I'm quite certain that Caesar didn't want to be a king. Caesar knew Roman history extremely well, and first steps in Roman history is we kill kings. We don't like kings. We had them once in the past. There were seven of them. Seven's a good round number, and seven is enough. And Roman history, from then on, is about every time anyone threatens to be a king, you're allowed, exceptionally, to kill him. The ringleaders in the assassination plot were two men called Brutus and Cassius. Brutus had been spared by Caesar after the Battle of Pharsalus. Cassius harboured a personal grudge. Caesar had once pinched some lions from him for the public games. They started to sound out other people who thought Caesar was undermining the Republic. More and more discontented senators joined in. Most of Rome seemed to know there was something afoot. But astoundingly, Caesar made a move that was typical of his self-belief. He sacked his bodyguard. To him, constantly watching your back was a sign of weakness and fear. On the other hand, he wasn't going to sit around waiting for something to happen. He announced that he was going to launch a new military campaign. He would leave Rome on the 18th of March. That gave the plotters a deadline. On the 14th, he went out for dinner. There was a discussion about what was a good way to die. Sudden death, said Caesar. One thing's certain. 24 hours after he made the flippant remark, he was dead. 2,000 years later, we can trace his every move. The 15th was the Ides of March and Caesar was due at a meeting of the Senate. But his wife had a premonition in a dream and urged him not to go. Caesar wasn't normally superstitious but he got a second opinion from a soothsayer and decided not to tempt fate and to stay at home instead. The plotters almost panicked but then they had a masterstroke. They sent for the man that Caesar was least likely to suspect in order to try and lure him to the place where they planned to kill him. Shrewdly, Decimus didn't try to persuade Caesar to attend the whole meeting just to pop out and adjourn it first. And as he spoke, he took Caesar by the hands and led him out into the street. Caesar was as usual surrounded by people asking him favours and giving him scrolls to read which were usually passed straight back to the slave secretary behind him. But a Greek philosophy teacher who knew all about the plot slipped him a piece of paper and asked him to read it at once. It concerns you personally, he said. Caesar took it but couldn't read it because of the press of people around him. It was his last chance. He went through to meet the Senate and his death. But not here at the Senate House in the Forum. The Senate building had been burnt down by fire and they were in temporary accommodation waiting for a new one to be built. The fateful meeting took place about half a mile in that direction at the Theatre of Pompey. It's Shakespeare's play that has the murder taking place on the steps of the Senate House. It's ironic that it really happened in a theatre built by the man who became Caesar's arch enemy. And although the murder's world famous the real location's pretty difficult to find. The Theatre of Pompey is shown on the tourist map but there's no sign at all of it in the street other than the intriguing shape of this building which mirrors the shape of the original theatre. The only actual remains though are around the corner. The nearest we can now get to Caesar's assassination the et tu Brute moment is around the back of this curved building in the basement of this restaurant. Caesar was invited into the Senate room just a few metres from here. As he went to sit down the plotters struck. A man called Casca stabbed him in the neck. Caesar spun round and stuck him in the arm with a metal pen. But then someone else stabbed him in the side. This was to prove the killer blow. But by then all 23 plotters were hacking and stabbing in such a frenzy that some of them even stabbed each other. Caesar never actually said et tu Brute. It was all far too confusing. Lots of blood and screaming. Instead he just pulled his robe over his face to mask the shame of a dying man. When the coast was clear three slaves carried the body home. Meanwhile the plotters ran through the streets proclaiming freedom. But the people of Rome didn't want freedom. They loved Caesar and turned out in their thousands in the forum to honour him when his body was cremated. They wanted another emperor. The Republic was never restored and in his honour his successors were known as Caesar. After more years of civil war it was Caesar's adopted son Augustus who formalised the role of emperor. But Julius Caesar is the watershed. Before him Rome was a democracy. After him it was an empire ruled by one man. And all because of the indomitable force of that one personality. Even following in Caesar's footsteps with the benefits of modern travel has been a pretty exhausting business. But at the end of my 2,000 mile quest I can certainly say I hail Caesar even if given his ruthless ambition I can't actually say that I like him very much. Nevertheless he was one of history's truly epic figures. He lived life with an energy and a ferocity that it's hard to imagine in anyone today. And his achievements were really colossal. His conquests ensured that European culture would be classical and not Celtic. And perhaps most important of all he persuaded the Roman people that one person rule could work. And this new model of the Roman Caesar would change Roman history forever.