Talk:Julius Caesar

This might be seen as OR but… (Julius Caesars birth/death)
I checked solar eclipse dates and they appear on 45bc (Plutarch mentions one at Ceasars death) and not in 44bc (atleast not during daylight)… I honestly think he was born 102bc and died 45bc. (Aged 56 as Plutarch writes).

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE-0099-0000.html

^ this has the dates of solar eclipses… most bc historians also agree Caesar was 56 when he died than 55.

Notice this 45BC time; -0044 Apr 29 08:38:41  is very close to the ides of march. 94.198.175.173 (talk) 01:02, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Synchronism of important events with astronomical phenomena is a common literary trope in ancient sources. Their presence or absence does not override the considered judgement of generations of classical scholars. The best modern sources place his birth on 100 BC, consistent with all ancient accounts; he died on 15 March 44, consistent with all ancient accounts. Ifly6 (talk) 02:15, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You should also be aware that the Roman calendar is not the same as the proleptic Julian calendar which is used for astronomical observations. Dates need first to be converted from proleptic Julian to correspond to the dates commonly used. The value –44 (Julian) corresponds to 45 BC because there is no Year zero. The two eclipses that occurred in April –44 and –43 were observed ... in the south Pacific ocean and Argentina, respectively. They were partial and annular as well. Ifly6 (talk) 02:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I would not associate differences in era notation (&minus;44 is equivalent to 45 BC) is not associated with observed vs. proleptic Julian calendar; either notation can be used with either calendar. I believe 94.198.175.173 has correctly allowed for the various notations. What is at issue is that the date stated in contemporaneous accounts, 15 March 44, cannot be reliably converted to the proleptic Julian date; the proleptic Julian date could be a few days earlier or later. This is because of mistakes made by the Romans in the 1st century BC in the implementation of the Julian calendar, and insufficient historical records to precisely undo the mistakes. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:36, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That seems correct. I think I skimmed -0044 Apr 29 ... ides of march to refer to 15 March 44 BC rather than as the IP correctly notes, the previous year. These eclipses are regardless not observable from Rome or even much of any part of the known Roman world. Ifly6 (talk) 05:30, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * What about Mercury eclipsing the sun? Is there a way to check dates for BC?
 * To the person who said there was only the comet - what about “obscuration of the suns rays”.
 * I don’t think the idea I have going is completely dead… I checked for Venus and no luck. Mercury didn’t show BC dates. 94.198.175.173 (talk) 16:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry I meant transit. 94.198.175.173 (talk) 16:25, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The transit of the Sun by Mercury or Venus would be hard to observe from Earth without special equipment, because the planet would only obscure a small part of the Sun's area. I don't know if there were any observations of these transits before the invention of the telescope. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair enough… last thing I found was on stellarium…
 * -44/03/30 - 17:15:00 - the moon is possibly blocking the suns rays. - Location is Athens too. 94.198.175.173 (talk) 16:52, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Throughout the whole day the moon is blocking the suns rays.
 * 45bc/March/30th that is. - Athens. 94.198.175.173 (talk) 09:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's impossible. It's such an outlandish claim that there is no way to know what to look for around that date. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I mean to say, see on stellarium (software) and you can enter the date on here. It will show where celestial bodies are positioned on the date and you can enter the location too on it. I’ve never observed when the moon is close to the sun by eye to see if it blocks sun rays but I thought this was possible unless anyone knows for sure it doesn’t because the moon is infront of the suns rays and perhaps this blocks sun rays visually. If I’m wrong then I am. 31.94.30.239 (talk) 23:48, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with . Also, the explanation of the eclipse maps allows one to understand that the eclipse of April 29, 45 BC, was visible in Antarctica, Australia, and the ocean in between. So people in Europe would have been unaware of it. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:29, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think it is now known almost for certain that Julius Caesar died on 14 March in the Julian calendar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#Leap_year_error for why it was uncertain until very recently, and see https://www.ancientsociety.com/rome/when-did-julius-caesar-die-its-wasnt-on-march-15th-after-all/ (perhaps) for a reference to the recent research that established the date precisely. What we call the Julian calendar wasn't correctly implemented until after Julius Caesar's death. Until recently we didn't know precisely how the transition from the incorrect Julian calendar to the correct Julian calendar was managed. But now we do. Lingvano (talk) 13:05, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The astrological event that accompanied Caesar's death was a comet, not an eclipse. --Nicknack009 (talk) 13:22, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We don't date ancient Roman events under the proleptic Julian calendar. We date them based on the Roman calendar in force at the time. Eg Pharsalus occurring on 9 August 48. This is because sources, such as Livy or Cicero's letters, themselves include day-level precision under their system. The day 15 March also had special significance for the conspirators in symbolising the republic, viz, it was the day prior to the change in 153 BC on which consuls used to be inaugurated. Ifly6 (talk) 14:29, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The ancientsociety.com is not a peer-reviewed scholarly publication, so is not fit to be cited in Wikipedia on a controversial historical topic. See WP:IRS. It also quotes from the late User:Chris Bennett, who contributed to our article on the Julian calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:20, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think this entire discussion is being sidetracked by the factual question of whether any eclipses occurred. On reflection, it doesn't matter. What matters is whether any reliable sources argue Caesar died in some other year or date than is universally recorded. They don't. Even if it did such a WP:EXTRAORDINARY claim would require extraordinary evidence. It shouldn't be included. Fin. Ifly6 (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Roman coinage and the Flaminius stater
We've been, it seems, in a dispute as to whether the coins minted in 44 are the first time a living Roman showed up on Roman coinage. The consensus in the scholarship is not that this is the first time a Roman minted a coin with his own visage. It is that it is the first time a Roman did so with the intent of circulating that coin in Rome at the mint in Rome: Roman coinage means more than "minted by Romans wherever they are". The context of minting your own face in Rome is clearly political re the fall of the republic and is rightfully emphasised in the reliable sources. Ifly6 (talk) 13:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)


 * No, the coins of Sulla (and Marius too, at right) which depict them as person on chariots don't count. I am aware of both coins' existence. These coins do not really portray anyone. The triumphator on the chariot is an abstraction which is pointed as a person only by the inscription. If the inscription weren't there it would be associated with the triumphator only by the time when it was issued. Ifly6 (talk) 13:25, 12 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I think you left similar remarks here. Ifly6 (talk) 13:26, 12 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I've edited to the following: Similarly extraordinary were a number of symbolic honours which saw Caesar's portrait placed on coins in Rome – the first for a living Roman Ifly6 (talk) 13:39, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Link to Main Article - Assassination of Julius Caesar
Where should the link to Assassination of Julius Caesar be located? I just added it directly under the Assassination header but then saw it was already linked later under section 4.3 Conspiracy and death. The Vital One (talk) 17:38, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 June 2024
In the “Early life and career” chapter ->in the “Life under Sulla and military service” subchapter

Change “The religious taboos of the priesthood would have forced Caesar to forego a political career;”

to “The religious taboos of the priesthood would have forced Caesar to forgo a political career;”

The corrected mistake is the use of the improper spelling of “forgo”. 84.31.143.233 (talk) 23:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ forego is a legitimate spelling, but I think it means something else. RudolfRed (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The dictionary bundled with my Mac calls it a variant spelling of forgo. No objections to the change though. Ifly6 (talk) 00:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

"Between x and y wounds later"
"... the dictator-for-life was dead." Could we maybe get this flowery language replaced by something less ambiguous? Does it mean he died between receiving the xth and yth wound or we don't know how many wounds he received in total? -- 2003:C9:474E:4300:E98E:9A10:3B3D:ABBC (talk) 15:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's much too flowery and confusing too. I've replaced it with "He was stabbed at least twenty-three times and died at once." I did consider "died there and then" but that felt a little unlike our normal encyclopedic language, and I felt "immediately" could be taken as "instantaneously", i.e. in seconds, which might be exaggeration, but I don't suppose "at once" is perfect either. NebY (talk) 15:27, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Cop-show/newspaper talk might be "on the scene", which I'm not advocating but gives time for famous last words, I suppose. The article doesn't seem to talk about the transporting of the body in the aftermath section.
 * Questionable wording that caught my eye when I was looking at 's improvement in context was Whether there was a tradition of tyrannicide at Rome is unclear. What would a clear "tradition" of tyrannicide look like? A ritual killing of the king periodically, attested in some cultures? Then no, there's no indication that tyrannicide was institutionalized as part of the mos maiorum. There were only seven kings in the semilegendary past, and there could be no tyrannicide once the Republic was founded because there was no tyrannos or rex to kill. Hence the resistance to a dictator in perpetuity. Is that simply an unknowing way to state the "no kings" cultural value in the Roman Republic? Does that sentence mean something like "Republican rhetoric about liberty rejected one-man rule to an extent that could condone assassination"? I state that awkwardly, but I don't get the intended meaning. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It is an odd statement. The citation is Morstein-Marx p318, which has "Yet despite the fact that in the late Republic some senators (Cicero and Brutus most notably) developed the doctrine of “preventive tyrannicide” to justify the assassination of a series of popular heroes from the Gracchi to Publius Clodius on the grounds that they aspired to regnum, or were in practice already de facto reges, there is little evidence that the Roman citizenry as a whole adhered to the idea, often treated by scholars as if it were a constitutional axiom of the Republic, that no politician could be allowed to rise so far above his peers in the Senate that they could not control him collectively" and expands on that, then continues on p319 with "Those senators who were committed to Caesar’s destruction in January 49 were therefore not self-evidently identifiable with “the Republic ...”. I don't think we're representing him well. (But Wikipedia Library access is wonderful.) NebY (talk) 22:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Then no, ... There were only seven kings in the semilegendary past, and there could be no tyrannicide once the Republic was founded because there was no tyrannos or rex to kill. I don't understand this argument. You could easily just as well turn it around and say that because there was a "tradition of tyrannicide" – ie Spurius Maelius, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Saturninius, etc were aspiring to overthrow the constitutional order but were killed before they had the chance to do it, in each case supported by "the people" (whatever that is), – the republic never fell into tyranny.
 * As to MM 2021 p 318, the question was whether tyrannicide was popularly acceptable. My first thoughts are as to the Athenian tyrannicides. Per NebY, some in the aristocracy believed so: and there are writings and discussions of Brutus' thoughts specifically (see Tempest 2017) that paint him in the camp of answering firmly in the affirmative. (Similarly, the story about Cato – Plut Cat Min 3.3 – as a child asking for a sword to free the state from Sulla.) There's scholarly disagreement, signposted by often treated by scholars as if it were a constitutional axiom, as to whether tyrannicide was acceptable or not. What do you think a rewriting should be? Ifly6 (talk) 16:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe something along these lines: "It's unclear whether Roman citizens in general thought politicians should be prevented, by tyrannicide or other extreme measures, from becoming too powerful, though some senators did use the popular hatred of monarchy as a justification for killings"? I'm sure that phrasing can be improved on but the approach hews a little closer to MM. Yes, it does also fit with my ill-informed mistrust of the senatorial justifications for eliminating the Gracchi and others and my nervousness about Plutarch accepting them or even actively framing some killings in such a way, presenting his audience with a little nobility of purpose in the late Republican welter of blood. NebY (talk) 17:02, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * That wording seems preferable to casting tyrannicide as a Roman "tradition". Programmatic tyrannicide is surely not the same thing as the defense of liberty, though I would have no problem with saying tyrannicide was a proud family tradition of the Bruti and their liberator propaganda. But two more points NebY made here are also good and useful: the distinction between actual would-be "tyrants" and the political rhetoric of characterizing one's political opponents as such, and the reminder that Roman histories were mostly written by the disgruntled senatorial class whose oligarchic privileges were diminished. Who counted as a tyrant is where the matter of perspective comes in; that's probably where the lack of moral and hence verbal clarity lies. (And of course nobody did actually step up to assassinate Sulla, who was surely more of a tyrant than the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Clodius ever got close to being.) Cynwolfe (talk) 20:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * (My apologies to Plutarch; he finds no nobility of purpose in the killings of the Gracchi, retails the accusation that Tiberius would be king without any confidence, and has it stir only the senate.) NebY (talk) 23:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, Val Max at least is in that camp.  Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica (talk) 01:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC) But joking aside, the question of whether Caesar was a tyrant was then disputed. Eg Matius I know the criticisms people have levelled against me since Caesar's death ... They say that one's country should come before friendship[,] as though they have proved that his [Caesar's] loss was beneficial to the res publica (Tempest 2017 p 217 citing Cic Fam 11.28). Matius is writing as if many people believed, or as he implies assumed without justification, that Caesar was a tyrant (or at least adjacent thereto) and I think belief in Caesarian tyranny is at least better founded than Clodian or Gracchan tyranny (that business with Saturninus probably counts). Ifly6 (talk) 02:27, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps It is not clear whether Roman political culture embraced the pre-emptive assassination of tyrants, whether incipient or realised, but many aristocratic writers of the period supported such radical action in the abstract. There is little evidence that the Roman public supported such action in general or, assuming they did, would have characterised Caesar as a tyrant. ? Ifly6 (talk) 01:59, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think my issue with how to state this in the article is that factional political violence resulting in a death of an opponent is not the same thing as tyrannicide, a word that has a specific meaning. Tyrannicide targets a person who holds supreme power and has no intention of relinquishing it – that's part of what makes them a tyrant and why assassination seems like the only way to get rid of them. The assassination of Caesar was planned as an intentional tyrannicide to remove him from holding perpetual power held outside normal electoral processes. The last ennobled tyrannicide in Rome before that was Tarquin, was it not? The "no kings" Republican cultural value of resisting tyranny, at least as expressed in elite literature, would justify the killing of a tyrant in the name of libertas, but that doesn't mean that Romans thought it was OK to kill an office-holder just cuz. Sulla was a tyrant, and there were longings for tyrannicide, but in the end he just got old and sick and retired. What the sources might be getting at is that despite political rhetoric from rivals, the death of a populist like a Gracchus, Saturninus, or Clodius was by definition not tyrannicide because they did not hold a position of tyrannical power. (And of course their murder was experienced by their supporters as the loss of a champion.) The response to Caesar's assassination, which was clearly tyrannicide because of the way he was positioned in power and the intentions of the assassins, was mixed — the Jewish community, for example, was said to have greatly mourned him because he had made himself their patron contra Pompey.
 * It's entirely clear that the Romans thought violence could become necessary in the cause of libertas, and that the killing of a tyrannus or would-be rex was justified. But libertas to a senator is something different from libertas to a free working person. What is also clear is that not every Roman citizen thought Caesar ought to be killed, tyrannus or not, and the liberators weren't universally acclaimed as such outside their circle of peers. Or even within it – if they had just let him go off to Parthia to avenge the Crassi, problem likely solved. Anyway, I think we can say this much more simply. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:11, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure but it feels to me there's a conflation in this response between tyrannicide and what MM 2021 is discussing, pre-emptive tyrannicide, which members of the aristocracy supported. Moreover, supporting the latter with argumentation like that of the Old Academy (Brutus) basically requires supporting the former. Yes, killing Tiberius Gracchus, Saturninus, or Clodius is not tyrannicide per se because they were not yet tyrants; however, the justification for killing them was that they were about to become tyrants. MM's statements on pp 318–19 in full context are these:
 * In the late Republic some senators (Cicero and Brutus most notably) developed the doctrine of "preventive tyrannicide" to justify the assassination of [alleged aspirants] to regnum, or were in practice already de facto reges.
 * there is little evidence that the Roman citizenry as a whole adhered to the idea.
 * The idea is often treated by scholars as if it were a constitutional axiom of the Republic and that people generally accepted it.
 * The average citizen was able to distinguish between potential threats to the liberty of the res publica and potential threats to the full political independence of senators [emphasis in original].
 * The senators [who conspired to kill Caesar] were therefore not self-evidently identifiable with "the republic", although many modern scholars have not shied away from accepting their self-representation as such.
 * Caesar too could and did claim to be "defending the republic" and he had in most respects [imo an overstatement] the more credible case, certainly for the average Roman voter and contio goer
 * I think what is relevant for our article is three things: (1) some Roman aristocrats believed that tyrants, realised and incipient, should be killed to save the republic; (2) contrary to many modern narratives, not all Romans would have accepted that belief on face value; (3) in the specific case of Caesar, not all Romans would have also agreed Caesar was a tyrant regardless.
 * If the objection is merely to the use of the word tyrannicide, I am less sanguine. The word is commonly used to describe Brutus et al as well as the killing. For example, the subtitle for MJB in OCD4 is literally Roman praetor and tyrannicide, 44 BCE. I think it would be NPOV to banish the word: OCD4 literally uses it in the shortest of short descriptions; MM accedes, in a book where he is pushing the hypothesis that Caesar was not anti-republican, that many scholars accept the opposite. Ifly6 (talk) 20:56, 18 July 2024 (UTC)