3717 AM · 44 BCE · world history
Julius Caesar
The conqueror of Gaul crosses the Rubicon, becomes dictator, and falls to senators' daggers.
In eight years Caesar conquers Gaul and writes the campaign up himself in a book still read in Latin classes. Refusing to disband his army, he crosses the Rubicon and starts a civil war. Victorious, he reforms the calendar. On the Ides of March conspirators stab him in the senate; the Republic does not survive.
Sources
Documents of the period
- inscriptions and coinage of the Roman Empire — Caesar’s coins — the first to bear a living Roman’s portrait — and the Julian calendar
Scholarship
- Roman authors: Tacitus, Suetonius, Livy — Suetonius, The Deified Julius; and Caesar himself, The Gallic War
Basis: documents and evidence.