They killed him to save the Republic. They destroyed it instead.

The Ides of March: Rome's Most Famous Murder

Julius Caesar is stabbed 23 times by senators fearing a king

On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times in the Roman Senate by senators fearing he would become king — but the murder triggered civil war and ended the Republic.

On March 15, 44 BC — the Ides of March — Julius Caesar walked into the Theatre of Pompey in Rome for a Senate meeting. A group of 60 senators, calling themselves the Liberatores, had been plotting his death for weeks. They believed Caesar intended to declare himself king, abolishing the Republic they considered sacred.

As Caesar took his seat, the senators surrounded him. One senator grabbed his toga; another stabbed him in the neck. In the melee that followed, Caesar was stabbed 23 times. A later autopsy — one of history's first — determined that only the second wound, through the chest, was fatal. Caesar may have survived the initial assault only to be killed by the pile-on.

Eternal images from that day: Caesar wrapping his toga around himself so he could die with dignity, and — perhaps apocryphally — saying "Et tu, Brute?" when he saw his close friend Marcus Junius Brutus among the attackers.

The conspirators expected gratitude and acclaim. Instead, they got civil war. Caesar's will made his 18-year-old great-nephew Octavian his adopted son and heir. Mark Antony used the funeral oration to turn public opinion against the conspirators. Most were dead within two years.

💡 Doctors who examined Caesar's wounds determined that only one of the 23 stab wounds was fatal — the others were inflicted by panicking conspirators who stabbed each other in the confusion.