And the next milestones
15 March The Ides of March (2 parts)
In the Roman calendar, March 15 was the Ides of March. The Ides fell on the 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of any other month. Specifically, the term is best known because Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC, which has given the day a foreboding overtone. But on the Ides of March, George Washington saved the fledgling United States from becoming a military dictatorship -- and declined the chance to become an American Caesar.
44 BC. Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
The Roman Senate traditionally met in the Curia Hostilia, which had been recently repaired from the fires that destroyed it years before, but the Senate had abandoned it for the new house under construction. So Caesar summoned the Senate to meet in the Pompey's Theater on the Ides of March. According to the Greek biographer Plutarch, a few days before, the soothsayer Titus Vestricius Spurinna apparently warned Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar disregarded the warning.
As the Senate convened, Caesar was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of senators who called themselves the Liberatores("Liberators"); they justified their action on the grounds that they committed tyrannicide, not murder, and were preserving the Republic from Caesar's alleged monarchical ambitions. Among the assassins who locked themselves in the Temple of Jupiter were Gaius Trebonius, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Gaius Cassius Longinus; Caesar had personally pardoned most of his murderers or personally advanced their careers. Marcus Brutus was a distant cousin of Caesar and named as one of his testamentary heirs.
The assassination sparked a civil war which resulted in the elevation of Caesar's adopted son (and grand nephew) Octavian (later known as Augustus) to the position of Roman emperor, the first to hold the title.