Reigning for nearly a half-century, Augustus became the longest-serving ruler in Roman history and ushered in two centuries of peace and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. By establishing the Roman Empire, Augustus completed the task his adopted father had started.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. On his arrival, Caesar was presented with a petition by Lucius Tillius Cimber for the return of his exiled brother. When Caesar refused, Cimber manhandled Caesar, pulling down his toga.
Blinded by the torrent of blood that poured from his wounds, Caesar fell on the steps of the Curia. His last words have been subject to centuries of speculation. The conspirators headed for the Capitol but were met by a bewildered, fearful crowd, who began a destructive fire.
Augustus declared his predecessor a god — Divus Iulius — the same year. If you look at the same event from the point of view of the smaller people, it makes you see the bigger players in a new way. The picture looking up from the bottom, or from the side, can often get you closer to the experience of people who were there on the spot than pretending that you're Julius Caesar or Brutus.
Yet he shared a philosophy with many of his fellow plotters, namely the enlightened, anti-superstition school of Epicureanism, which held that the gods, if they existed at all, were far away and not interested in human affairs, and that people should use their reason to moderate their passions, thereby avoiding pain and achieving inner peace—a fashionable philosophy among the educated classes of Rome during this period.
Stothard vividly narrates how Epicureanism served as a mobilizing philosophy among the assassins, even as they argued over whether the true Epicurean would go so far as to assassinate Caesar, who was, after all, a Roman consul.
Stothard says this philosophical dimension to the assassination and ensuing civil wars sometimes gets overlooked. How bad did a ruler have to be before you were justified in committing the country and half the world to civil war? There were other people with very similar views who said if someone like Julius Caesar is in charge of the whole world, you could never get personal peace.
Not that all the plotters were quite so high-minded. Berezovsky had also been an ally of Alexander Litvinenko, another exiled Russian oligarch, who was assassinated via polonium poisoning in In , 12 years into his own exile, Berezovsky was found hanged in his bathroom.
The coroner said he was unable to offer a conclusive verdict about how the death had taken place.
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