William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar, first performed in 1599 and published in 1623, has become the English-speaking world’s best-recognized version of the story. Together, Plutarch and Suetonius recorded sufficient information to transform Caesar’s assassination into a timeless story that has been depicted in poetry, drama, motion pictures, novels, and in visual art works. His Lives of the Twelve Caesars provided some elements that varied from Plutarch but which enriched the story’s dramatic character. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (Suetonius) wrote another narrative around 120 A.D. Among these elements were Artemidorus’s note of warning, the murder site at the foot of Pompey’s statue, the names of conspirators, reputed number of stab wounds, and the diversion by conspirators of Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) from the crime scene to prevent his intervention. He provided key elements of the story that have influenced literary and visual arts interpretations since then. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch) wrote the most influential narrative in his Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, also called the Parallel Lives, around 100 A.D.

The iconic character of Caesar’s assassination and its adaptability to various political and cultural interpretations stem partly from the fact that the Roman historians who are the chief sources of information wrote about the event many years after it occurred. “Beware the Ides of March” is a commonplace quote from William Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar and “Et tu, Brute” is another quotation from Roman historians, supposedly uttered by Caesar as Brutus struck him. Other parts of the story of Caesar’s death have become colloquial phrases. However, John Wilkes Booth notoriously exclaimed the phrase after shooting President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, and Timothy McVeigh, the most notorious native-born American terrorist, was pictured wearing a t-shirt with the motto. As an example of his malleable legacy, the Latin phrase “Sic semper tyrannis,” supposedly uttered by Marcus Brutus Junius, one of the chief Liberatores, after he struck Caesar, is the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia and is written on the emblems of United States military organizations. Stabbed with knives-some reports stated he suffered 23 wounds-Julius Caesar has been remembered for millennia as a judicious ruler, a sagacious empire-builder, an author of a classic work of Roman history, or a power-hungry tyrant depending upon the political values of successive times and places. murder of Gaius Julius Caesar by a group of conspirators who called themselves “Liberatores” is one of the most dramatic, best known events in the history of Rome.

Julius caesar assassination