Quotes from Anthony Everitt

The dictator was due to quit Rome on March 18 to join his legions in Greece.

The Roman month lasted either twenty-nine or thirty-one days;

He was pleased to receive his colleague's ships, but had no serious intention of finding him his legions.

not (as most do) to learn my trade in the Forum, but so far as possible to enter the Forum already trained.

He traced his lineage to the splendid, mysterious Etruscan civilization, based in today's Tuscany

Ides" was the name for the thirteenth or the fifteenth, depending on the month's length.)

Caesar did not arrive until about eleven o'clock in the morning

His first task was to prevent Brutus and Cassius from taking over Greece

Men pressed around Caesar in a tight scrum as each tried to stab him;

He had become a well-loved figure in Apollonia and many of its citizens came to his house begging him to stay.

the constitution's various parts were so mutually interdependent that reform within the rules was next to impossible. AS a result, radicals found that they had little choice other than to set themselves beyond and against the law.

panicked and fled. Many were killed. Ariobarzanes himself escaped into the hills with forty cavalrymen and five thousand foot.

The mob, infuriated by the assassination, went berserk. They burned down the Senate House

SHOWDOWN 32–31 B.C.

Caesar was cremated on the spot.

Hirtius rode into Antony's camp and was struck down and killed fighting around the commander's tent.

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy.

This was a disastrous error in judgment, as Brutus and his friends now realized.

Political debate became polarized into bitter conflicts, with radical outsiders trying to press change on conservative insiders who, in the teeth of all the evidence, believed that all was for the best under the best of all possible constitutions.

remembering his great-uncle and his affection for him, Octavius burst into tears.

Caesar had written a new will during the brief Italian holiday on his return from Spain in 45 B.C.

Tyranny, he once remarked, was a delightful place, but there was no way out of it.

Personally, I am always very nervous when I begin to speak. Every time I make a speech I feel I am submitting to judgment, not only about my ability but my character and honor. I am afraid of seeming either to promise more than I can perform, which suggests complete irresponsibility, or to perform less than I can, which suggests bad faith and indifference.

The remaining units of the republican army surrendered.