The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination

William Shakespeare's gripping  play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic  affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary  operation, a generals' plot put together by Caesar's disaffected  officers and designed with precision. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key  players, but they had the help of a third man - Decimus. He was the  mole in Caesar's entourage, one of Caesar's leading generals, and a  lifelong friend. It was he, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar.

Caesar's  assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He  threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and in the power  of senators. The assassins rallied support among the common people, but  they underestimated Caesar's soldiers, who flooded Rome. The assassins  were vanquished; their beloved Republic became the Roman Empire.