How They Croaked

Roman Statesman

Born: Rome, Italy, July 13, 100 BC

Died: Rome, Italy, March 15, 44 BC 56 years old

JULIUS CAESAR WAS cut out of his mother, Aurelia Cotta, with a knife, during a medical birthing procedure that is known today as a caesarean section. It seems like it should have been called a cottarean section (after his mom). But instead, Caesar got all the glory. And that, in part, describes how Julius Caesar made his way through life. Caesar was always saying I, I, I. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” And “I draw blood.” Caesar survived fifty battles in far-off lands only to die in his hometown at the hands of political riffraff in Rome. He left this world the same way he came into it—by the knife.

It was said, “He’s tall for a Roman.” That’s code for not tall. Caesar was, however, intelligent, charismatic, and fast to action. He could rally crowds of men to grab their sandals and follow him off to sack yonder towns. His battle cry was “Happiness!” He loved everything military: the camping, the training, and the killing. Caesar paid his men well and made soldiering a real career.

Caesar was into self-promotion before the concept was even invented. He wrote ten books about his fabulous life and called them history books. And he made his own birthday a holiday.

Caesar went to Egypt to take over the place, but he met Cleopatra and his plans changed. He kind of liked her, and he really liked all her gold. They had a son together. They called him Little Caesar, just like the pizza restaurant. Caesar had three wives, but none of them were Cleopatra.

The Roman Senate didn’t want just one person to rule Rome, so Caesar was part of a three-man team called a triumvirate. That lasted a nanosecond because Caesar didn’t like to share very much. After a civil war, Caesar said, “I am dictator for life,” which was quite a horse pill for the senators to swallow, including Caesar’s good friend Brutus.

Then Caesar said, “I’m Mr. Nice Dictator.” He forgave his enemies, which was a big deal because normally it was so much easier to kill than to forgive. (Some people still feel that way.) Caesar lowered mortgage rates, gave away land, and built new settlements for veterans when they returned from war. The only thing was, he didn’t pass these reforms by the Senate first.

The senators were just a bunch of rich guys and they wanted to keep everything for themselves. They decided that Caesar had to be stopped. He was getting too big for his toga and was a traitor to his class. Sixty senators, including his pal Brutus, hatched a plan. Caesar was scheduled to meet with the Senate on March 15, a date the Romans called the ides of March.

Legend has it Caesar decided to skip the Senate meeting because a fortune-teller had told him to “Beware the ides of March.”

But then Brutus went to Caesar’s house and acted all buddy-buddy to make sure Caesar would show up.

When Caesar entered the Senate hall, the conspirators moved in on him like hyenas circling a zebra they are about to eat for lunch.

One senator grabbed Caesar’s robe and pulled it down off his shoulder, making Caesar’s back an easy target for another senator to thrust his dagger into. Attacking Caesar from behind should have been a no-brainer, but the guy either was petrified or needed glasses because the knife barely grazed Caesar’s shoulder. Within seconds, the wall of senators pulled hidden daggers from the pleats of their tunics. Caesar saw his friend Brutus and said, “You too, Brutus?”

Brutus started wildly swinging his dagger in Caesar’s direction. All sixty senators were supposed to get a stab at Caesar so no one man could be blamed. Outnumbered sixty to one, even the great Caesar didn’t stand a chance. He was stabbed in the legs, back, groin, face, and eyes. He pulled his toga up over his head and fell to the ground with twenty-three stab wounds. The remaining thirty-seven senators didn’t need to bother.

The killers waited for Caesar to bleed to death on the floor. They didn’t have a post-assassination strategy except to bolt out the door. Nobody wanted to be caught dead with a dead Caesar. The assassins thought they’d be heroes. Out in the streets, they proclaimed that Caesar was a tyrant and that Rome would be better off without him. But the citizens of Rome weren’t buying it.

Caesar’s body lay abandoned in a bloody heap for most of the day. Three servants eventually carried his remains to his house. Everybody came out to watch his bloody corpse go by.

Now an angry, seething crowd was forming. Military men who had served under Caesar were outside with their swords, ready to kill the assassins.

The murderous senators holed up together for the night and made a new plan while a riotous crowd took over Rome. The guilty and nervous senators decided to ratify all of Caesar’s projects. They also decreed “Don’t kill the assassins!” Nice decree.

A gilded shrine was constructed for Caesar’s coffin in the center of town, and his murdered corpse was placed inside. The Romans went crazy.

Caesar’s shrine was set on fire. Everything that wasn’t nailed down was thrown in to stoke the fire. The gigantic funeral pyre burned for hours until only a mound of ashes was left.

Caesar had survived wars, battles, and treks to far-flung lands only to be killed in Rome, Italy, on March 15, 44 BC, by his peers. Beware the ides of March, indeed. He was fifty-six years old. In his will, Caesar gave his personal garden to the people of Rome, and he left money to every citizen.

The ides of March were bad luck for Caesar’s assassins, too. Not one of them survived the next year; they were all hunted down and murdered.

THE FIRST RECORDED FORENSIC AUTOPSY—an examination of a dead body to find out the cause of death—was performed on Caesar.

Doctor Antistius determined that, of Caesar’s twenty-three stab wounds, only the one in his chest was fatal. Caesar would have survived the other twenty-two.

Autopsies have been performed for thousands of years. Before the 1400s it was a crime to dissect a human body, but that didn’t stop anatomy students, the so-called “body snatchers,” from stealing corpses.

In the 1500s, the Catholic Church accepted autopsies as a learning tool. Technological advancements like MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT scans make most autopsies unnecessary today.

AUTOPSY RATES

• 50% of all deaths up until the 1950s

• 20% in 1970

• 0–5% now

THE ROMAN CALENDAR OF CAESAR’S time was only 355 days long. Ten days short per year quickly added up to snow in summer.

In 46 BC, Caesar made the year 365 days long—with an added day every fourth year, known as leap year. He named the new calendar after himself: the Julian calendar. But it was still eleven minutes off. In 1,600 years, those eleven minutes added up to snow in summer again.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII fixed the problem and put the snow back in winter once and for all with a new leap year rule. Years that are divisible by 4 but not by 100 are leap years. (It’s a lot harder than it sounds.) He renamed it the Gregorian calendar, after himself. This is the calendar we use today.

Roman leaders: every Roman leader after him is named Caesar somebody or other

Kaiser: German leaders were named “Kaiser,” which comes from “Caesar”

Caesar salad: originated in the 1920s by Caesar Cardini (of course, he was named after Julius Caesar)