The soothsayer warned Caesar to beware the Ides (the 15th) of March. Julius Caesar was one of the greatest men and most brilliant military and civil leaders of all time and also a controversial figure. Was he seeking to save the Republic through a short-term dictatorship or to establish an empire as did his great-nephew Octavian (ruling as Augustus)? I side with noted turn-of-the 20th century historian J.A. Froude in believing the former. Here is an 1806 painting by Vincenzo Camuccini "The Death of Julius Caesar"
@beckyromero Too many "ifs". Lots of promising men and women died prematurely, natural and unnatural deaths. Even Caligula was reportedly a caring, good man until an illness almost killed him, and after that something seems to have snapped in his brain and he became the monster known to history. Chance and luck have a ridiculous weight in human history, for good and bad.
