Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman whose conquest of Gaul and subsequent seizure of power ended the constitutional order of the Roman Republic. Rising through the Republic's political offices, he formed an informal political alliance with Pompey and Crassus, known to modern historians as the First Triumvirate, then spent nine years subduing Gaul in a campaign he recorded himself in his Commentaries. When the Senate ordered him to lay down his command, he instead crossed the Rubicon river into Italy with his army in 49 BCE, precipitating a civil war he won against Pompey and the Senate's other defenders. Appointed dictator with increasingly permanent powers, he pushed through reforms including a new calendar, before a group of senators who saw him as a threat to the Republic's institutions assassinated him on the Ides of March, 44 BCE. His death did not restore the Republic; it triggered a further round of civil wars that ended with his adopted heir Octavian, later Augustus, becoming Rome's first emperor.