Did Julius Caesar deserve to be assassinated - Research Paper Example

At his time of assassination he had become a dictator of the roman republic. His assassination was carried out by a group of individuals calling themselves the liberators. They feared that his dictatorship would be eternity. This therefore saw the need to end it before things were out of hand, hence the assassination. Another group that was in support of this was the senate. They too feared that Caesar after being declared dictator would have them replaced or even make senate extinct. Senate in roman republic constituted a body of elected members by the consuls.

Their appointment was automatic after having served as roman magistrates. Motive and plot of Caesar’s assassination Before his death, Julius Caesar receives a lot of hints about his assassination but goes on to ignore them. His two close friends Brutus and Cassius are the lead roles in plotting his assassination. This is evident in Cassius conversation when he asserts that “Brutus shall lead the way, and we will grace his heels with the boldest and best hearts of Rome.” (Act 3, scene 1, ll.135-136).Even after his assassination, Brutus goes ahead to give a speech to the public saying that he loved Caesar despite having killed him.

But his love for Rome exceeded that love he had for Caesar. His fear was that all Romans would be enslaved if Caesar assumed official power in Rome. Although he took part in his assassination, a great deal to convince him is put in place by other conspirators being led by Cassius. Brutus is chosen because he is the closest man to Caesar and by all means Caesar death would be seen as deserved by the roman public. Somehow Caesar warrants his death. On the night before his assassination in his wife (Calphurnia) had a dream where she saw his statue having small holes with blood oozing out in them.

His begs Caesar not to go to capitol claiming to have a bad feeling about that dream. But Caesar out of pride and arrogance goes ahead to attend it, because Decius tells him otherwise that the dream his wife just had meant he would indeed be crowned a king. Decius too is among the conspirator plotting Caesar’s death. It also believed that the pride and arrogance clouded him, hence hindering him to seeing his assassination. He believed and knew that no one had the guts to even attempt an assassination of him because that would create political turmoil in Rome.

This made him to still not elect a bodyguard to attend to his security. Another thing that he did wrong was to strip senators’ powers and add to his. This together with challenging the roman commander Pompey displayed a discount and disrespect to both the tradition and culture of the Romans. In a particular ceremony of the Romans called the festival of Lupercal, he is also hinted about his assassination by a soothsayer who runs and tells him “beware the Ides of March”. By this he meant that he should take care and be watchful at around 15th of March.

But what did Caesar do? He instead took it lightly like any other threat and did nothing to investigate about it. When Cassius and Brutus converse, they ridicule Caesar for not trying to act like a king but in real sense he is. They say that he going round and behaving like king which does not please them at all. When they come upon Casca, who is also among the conspirators, Casca tells them that Caesar had just been presented a crown but he instead declined five times however fainted on the third.

When the crowd sees this, they hail and praise him in love. Casca is mad