I started as a prosecutor, accusing sleazy governors of corruption and I sponsored bills to pay soldiers and veterans and punish misconduct by governors, I gave Roman citizenship to new groups (ergo more taxes), planned a mega building program of Aqueducts, and adopted a spanking new calendar and if the Senate didn’t go along with my whims, I just rewrote the constitution and with the Triumvirate which included Rome’s richest man (Marcus Crassus) and a brutal general (Pompey) backing me, not many argued.
I never set out to be a leader and was actually going to study oratory at Rhodes but on the way I was captured by Cilician pirates which was a grave mistake on their part. Once I arranged for my ransom to be paid, I had them increase it first from twenty talents to fifty, I gathered some men, went back and overpowered them and had them crucified.
Against the Senate’s orders, I marched on Rome in 49 B.C. and instigated a civil war that lasted four years which as I was later appointed dictator for life and they named a month after me, went pretty well.
A good way to keep the public on side was to organise all kinds of sporting events, I was in charge of the Roman games in the Circus Maximus in 65 B.C., of course it almost bankrupted us but you fudge some numbers and get back on top.
Vini Vidi Veci, or I came, I saw, I conquered and in my time I left an estimated three million dead on the battlefield, conquered eight hundred cities, three hundred tribes, and sold another million into slavery but my biggest fault was that I was too damned nice. Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Rutus, both former enemies, were forgiven for trying to plot against me and wound up literally stabbing me in the back. Of course, if it hadn’t been them, it would have been one of the other sixty conspirators that were in on my murder.
I was a military genius and one thing I liked to do was sneak up on the enemy and attack from the rear, I really loved the rear assault and not just in war because this was 45bc and men and women could love whoever the hell they wanted and I did as often as possible and when you have someone like the 18 year old Egyptian Queen, Cleopatra waiting for you and smelling of ass's milk, ..let's just leave that there shall we but it was one of history’s great love affairs.
Bringing her to Rome in 46 B.C. was politically a risky move, my wife Calpurnia wasn't best pleased and the Roma public were not amused and that was when it all started to go wrong and ended with the whole 'Et Tu Brute' thing.
I can't say I wasn't warned as a soothsayer told me to beware the middle of the month but I shrugged it off and went ahead with the Senate meeting where some my Senators, fed up with my behaviour, decided to do something about me.
They grabbed me and dragged me to the floor but if that never got the point across that they were not best pleased with me, the fact that the follow up action was for forty of them to stick knives into my naked body definitely did.
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