Cassius Longinus: The Leader of the Plot to Kill Julius Caesar

Gaius Cassius Longinus was a primary leader of the group of Roman senators who murdered Julius Caesar. Motivated by political belief and personal resentment, he was convinced that Caesar's growing power was destroying the Roman Republic. After the killing, Cassius and his allies were forced to flee Rome. He was later defeated in battle and took his own life to avoid capture by his enemies.

Cassius was born around 86 BCE into the noble Cassia family. His father was a senator. Little is known about his mother, but she was reportedly well respected. As a young man, Cassius studied philosophy on the Greek island of Rhodes and became fluent in the language. He formed a friendship with the famous Roman orator Cicero. The playwright William Shakespeare later described Cassius through Caesar's words: "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. / He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous."

Historians believe Cassius developed a hatred for absolute rulers early in life. The historian Plutarch wrote about an incident from his school days. When a classmate, the son of the former dictator Sulla, boasted about his father's power, the teenage Cassius attacked him. He said he would do it again if the boy repeated his statements. Plutarch described Cassius's attitude as a "great hostility and bitterness toward the whole race of tyrants."

In the 50s BCE, Roman politics was controlled by three powerful men: Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Crassus. Seeking military success, Crassus started an invasion of the powerful Parthian Empire. Cassius joined his army as an officer.

Initially, the expedition went well, and Crassus won minor victories against the Parthians in Syria. But then, the overconfident triumvir crossed the Euphrates and marched his army into unfamiliar enemy territory marked by scorching desert terrain. Before long, Crassus's luck ran out, and his legions were crushed at the Battle of Carrhae, 53 BCE, the worst Roman defeat since the days of Hannibal. Thousands of Roman soldiers were killed, several eagle standards were lost, and, shortly after the battle, Crassus himself was taken prisoner and executed, reportedly by having molten gold poured down his throat. As one of the only senior officers left standing, Cassius took command of the tattered remnants of the army. He led the 10,000 survivors back into Syria and holed up in Antioch, the center of Roman power in the region. There, he began to prepare for the Parthian counterattack.

The invasion ended in a terrible defeat at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE. Crassus was killed, and the Roman army was destroyed. Cassius, one of the few surviving senior officers, took command. He led 10,000 soldiers back to the Roman province of Syria. When a Parthian force invaded Syria, Cassius successfully defended the capital city, Antioch. He then fought a guerrilla war against the invaders. In 51 BCE, he trapped and destroyed the main Parthian army, killing their general. This victory proved Cassius was a skilled military commander.

As the acting governor of Syria for three years, Cassius used his power for personal profit. He forced the local population to give him money and interfered with trade. This earned him the mocking nickname 'the Date.' He also invaded Judea, capturing and enslaving thousands of Jewish people to sell them. While this kind of corruption was common for Roman governors, these actions are very different from his later image as a defender of republican government.

Cassius, who had just been elected tribune of the plebs, sided with Pompey and the Senate. He fled Rome and went to Greece, where Pompey was marshaling an army. Put in charge of a Pompeian fleet, Cassius once again proved his military worth by destroying a Caesarian fleet off the coast of Sicily in 48 BCE. He spent the next few months harassing ships off southern Italy. But Cassius's naval successes were merely a sideshow to the war playing out in Greece. There, at the Battle of Pharsalus, Caesar won a decisive victory over Pompey, breaking his army. Defeated but undeterred, Pompey fled to Egypt but was unceremoniously assassinated as soon as he stepped ashore. Though the civil war would grind on for a few more years, the writing was already on the wall: Caesar had won.

Cassius returned to Rome in 50 BCE, just as political tension between Caesar and the Senate broke into civil war. Cassius sided with Pompey and the Senate against Caesar. He commanded a navy for Pompey and won a battle at sea near Sicily in 48 BCE. However, Caesar's main army decisively defeated Pompey's forces at the Battle of Pharsalus later that year.

After Pompey's defeat and death, Cassius asked for and received Caesar's forgiveness. Caesar even made him an officer in his own army. Cassius later claimed he almost killed Caesar during their meeting, though historians doubt this story. He served in a military campaign in Anatolia but refused to fight against old allies in Africa.

Back in Rome, Cassius saw a changed political system. Caesar was now the dictator. Cassius grew more and more resentful because Caesar repeatedly gave important jobs to his brother-in-law, Marcus Junius Brutus, instead of to him. Personal insults also angered him. Rumors spread that Caesar was having an affair with Cassius's wife. Another story claimed that Caesar seized lions Cassius had bought for public games.

This was not to say that Cassius's career had reached a dead end. In fact, Caesar, who was making political appointments years in advance, agreed to let Cassius be consul in 41 BCE. But it was precisely this idea of having to kowtow to Caesar to get ahead that rankled Cassius, offending his sense of dignitas – a complex virtue encompassing both personal honor and prestige. Of course, Cassius may have also nursed a personal grudge against the dictator. Rumor had it that Caesar, a notorious womanizer, was sleeping with Cassius's wife, Junia Tertia (also Brutus's half-sister). There was also the story told by Plutarch that Caesar confiscated some lions that Cassius had purchased in Megara for the games in Rome, and that this hurt his pride (Plutarch admits that the lions could have belonged to Cassius's brother, Lucius, instead).

Most importantly, Cassius believed Caesar was moving toward becoming a king. In early 44 BCE, Caesar was named dictator for life. He then disrespected Roman traditions, like refusing to stand when senators entered a room. During a public festival, Mark Antony offered Caesar a crown. Though Caesar refused it, many people thought this was a test to see if the public would accept him as king. Cassius felt that Caesar controlled Rome so completely that ordinary senators had no real power.

By February 44 BCE, Cassius was sure that killing Caesar was the only way to save the Republic. He started recruiting other unhappy senators into a secret plot. The group grew to about sixty men, though fewer than twenty would actually carry out the attack. The conspirators had different reasons for joining. Some were old enemies of Caesar, some disliked his political changes, and others truly wanted to bring back the old Republic.

Cassius knew he needed Brutus. Brutus's famous ancestor had helped drive out Rome's last kings. His involvement would give the plot a powerful symbolic meaning. Cassius put aside their recent disagreements and convinced Brutus to join. While Cassius was the main planner, Brutus became the moral center of the group. Cassius wanted to kill Mark Antony too, but Brutus argued against it. He insisted their goal was justice, not just taking power for themselves. They decided to act at a Senate meeting on the Ides of March (March 15), just before Caesar was to leave Rome for a new war.

On the day of the murder, Caesar almost stayed home because he felt sick and there were bad omens. Fearing they would lose their chance, Cassius sent a conspirator Caesar trusted, Decimus Brutus, to bring him to the Senate. Decimus succeeded, convincing Caesar to go to the meeting hall.

The conspirators – or ‘Liberators', as Cicero called them – then marched from the Portico of Pompey to the Capitoline Hill, their hands and togas still covered in blood. They spent the next two days holed up there, giving speeches justifying the murder. The Liberators did not leave the Capitoline until 17 March when a compromise was reached, brokered by Cicero: the assassins would be granted amnesty, and in return, Caesar's acts and appointments would still stand. That night, as a show of goodwill, Cassius went to have dinner at Antony's house. It was a tense meal. Antony asked if Cassius was hiding a dagger under his armpit, to which Cassius replied that he certainly did have a dagger for Antony, in case he, too, turned out to be a tyrant.

When Caesar entered, the conspirators surrounded him and stabbed him twenty-three times. He died at the foot of a statue of his old rival, Pompey. The killers, who called themselves the 'Liberators,' then marched to the Capitoline Hill. Their hands and robes were still bloody. They gave speeches explaining the murder. After two days, a tense agreement was made. The assassins were granted an official pardon, and Caesar's laws and government appointments were kept in place.

The peace did not last. Riots broke out at Caesar's public funeral, threatening the homes of the conspirators. By April, Brutus and Cassius fled Rome for their own safety. They traveled east to gather armies. Cassius returned to Syria, where he built a powerful force of twelve legions.

In Rome, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, joined with Mark Antony and another leader to form the Second Triumvirate. They canceled the assassins' pardon and declared them enemies of the state. Brutus and Cassius knew a final battle was unavoidable.

In the spring of 42 BCE, Cassius led his army to the island of Rhodes, where he had once studied. He brutally plundered the island for its wealth to pay for his war. He then joined forces with Brutus's army.

In the spring of 42 BCE, Cassius led his army to Rhodes, the Greek island where he had studied philosophy as a boy. But this time, he arrived with less peaceful intentions – since Rhodes had recently supported one of his enemies, he plundered it and put 50 of its leading men to death. Having thus filled his treasury with Rhodian gold and silver, he met up with Brutus and combined forces.

The final battle happened on October 3, 42 BCE, at Philippi in Macedonia. It was Cassius's birthday. Their army was larger and held a better position than the forces of Antony and Octavian. However, Antony outmaneuvered them and attacked Cassius's camp.

From his position, Cassius saw part of his army retreating. He mistakenly believed Brutus's forces had also been defeated. Preferring death to capture, he ordered a servant to behead him. When Brutus found Cassius's body, he mourned him as "the last of the Romans." Brutus had him buried in secret to protect the army's morale. Brutus himself was defeated and took his own life about three weeks later. Their deaths marked the end of the Republic they had tried to save. As the historian Suetonius noted, within three years of killing Caesar, the men most responsible for the act were dead.