Caesar employs the tactics that served him in Gaul against his fellow Romans. Pompey believes that Caesar will hold off on attacking until his full army returns from Gaul, but Caesar instead advances rapidly through Italy, relying on surprise and intimidation. Towns along the route, their loyalties purchased by Caesar’s agents, surrender without resistance. Refugee columns fleeing toward Rome trigger panic in the capital, where ancient fears of northern invasion resurface. Citizens report supernatural portents: Marius rising from his grave and Sulla’s ghost prophesying doom on the Campus Martius. The Senate’s confidence evaporates as members recall Sulla’s proscription lists.

Pompey abandons Rome and orders an evacuation, declaring anyone remaining a traitor. This decision fractures the Republic irreparably, forcing agonizing choices on figures like Marcus Junius Brutus. Though his mother, Servilia, was Caesar’s lover and some claim Brutus is Caesar’s son, and though Pompey’s forces murdered Brutus’s legal father during the earlier civil war, Brutus ultimately sides with Pompey. He follows his uncle and father-in-law, Cato, viewing Pompey as the Republic’s legitimate defender despite his bloody early career. Most senators reluctantly join the evacuation after a night of anguished deliberation.

The abandonment proves catastrophic: “The Republic’s […] vitality was nourished by the streets and public places of Rome […] Uprooted, how could the Republic remain true to the will of the gods, and how were the wishes of the Roman people to be known?” (299). As Pompey retreats southward, Caesar pursues relentlessly. Senators begin allocating provinces abroad: Cato receives Sicily, Metellus Scipio gets Syria, and Pompey takes Spain, though they will effectively be ruling as “warlords” absent the legitimacy conferred by the government in Rome.

Domitius Ahenobarbus attempts to halt Caesar at Corfinium, the seat of the rebels’ capital during the Social War. However, the inhabitants, still alienated from Rome and sympathetic to the Marian cause with which Caesar is now identified, force a surrender. Brought before Caesar, Domitius begs for death. Caesar refuses, granting clemency that functions as profound humiliation.

Pompey’s forces manage to evacuate from Brundisium and escape to Thessalonica, Greece, where the Senate reconvenes. Mustering forces abroad, Pompey plans to cut off supplies to the Italian peninsula. Back in Rome, Caesar seizes the emergency funds before placing an ally, Marcus Lepidus, in charge of the city and Antony in charge of Italy writ large. He then clashes with Pompey’s forces in Spain as two key allies, Curio and Caelius, suffer fatal defeats.

In July 48 BCE, near Pharsalus in northern Greece, Pompey’s strategy of attrition begins to succeed, as Caesar’s own forces are now starving. However, pressure from impatient senators forces him to offer battle. The night before, he dreams of entering his theater in Rome and dedicating spoils to Venus, Caesar’s ancestral goddess, which he interprets as a bad omen. Despite outnumbering Caesar’s troops more than two-to-one, Pompey’s army is shattered when Caesar orders his men to thrust their javelins at the faces of the aristocratic cavalry. Pompey’s horsemen flee, his infantry collapses, and Domitius dies leading the left wing. Caesar wins decisively by midday.

Surveying the Roman dead that evening, Caesar remarks bitterly that his opponents had brought this disaster upon themselves. He pardons survivors and rejoices to find Brutus safe, welcoming him into his inner circle. Cicero concludes that the war is over, but Cato refuses surrender. He sails for Africa with his garrison and vows never again to lie down while eating (the Roman custom and thus a mark of “civilization”).

Pompey escapes to Mytilene to collect his wife, Cornelia, and then sails to Egypt seeking refuge with young Ptolemy XIII. On September 28, 48 BCE, he boards a small boat sent to bring him ashore. During the crossing, a Roman renegade and Egyptian conspirators stab him repeatedly, killing him as Cornelia watches helplessly from their ship.

Three days later, Caesar arrives in Alexandria, Egypt, the magnificent capital surpassing Rome in scale and beauty. He receives Pompey’s preserved head as a gift and weeps, disgusted to learn that a cabal of Ptolemy’s ministers orchestrated the murder. Caesar occupies the royal palace and announces that he will arbitrate between Ptolemy and his sister, Cleopatra, who is vying with her brother for the throne.

One evening, Cleopatra has herself smuggled into Caesar’s presence rolled inside a carpet. The theatrical gesture delights Caesar, and they become lovers. When Ptolemy learns of this, he incites Alexandrian mobs to attack the Romans. Despite making concessions—recognizing Ptolemy as co-ruler and restoring Cyprus to the siblings—Caesar remains besieged for five months. During the siege, Cleopatra becomes pregnant with Caesar’s child.

Reinforcements arrive in March 47 BCE. Ptolemy flees and drowns in the Nile, leaving Cleopatra undisputed ruler. After eliminating one sibling-rival, she maintains Ptolemaic tradition by marrying her younger brother. Meanwhile, Caesar receives urgent news: Antony is mismanaging Italy, Mithridates’s son, Pharnaces, has invaded Pontus, Scipio and Cato are raising armies in Africa, and Spain remains unstable. Nevertheless, he lingers in Egypt for two more months. In late spring, he and Cleopatra cruise down the Nile, where she displays herself as both Greek queen and divine pharaoh. These dual roles suggest new possibilities for Caesar’s own future authority.

Only in late May does he finally depart to resume campaigning. After defeating Scipio’s army in Africa in April 46 BCE, Caesar approaches Utica, where Cato realizes the Republic is doomed and dies by suicide. Caesar arrives to find Utica mourning and is frustrated at losing his chance to pardon his greatest opponent. Returning to Rome in July 46 BCE, Caesar celebrates four triumphs in September. The Senate appoints him dictator for 10 years. When Pompey’s sons raise rebellion in Spain, even pardoned Pompeians like Cassius Longinus prefer Caesar’s mercy to the brothers’ bloodthirstiness.

Troubled by Cato’s death, Brutus divorces his wife to marry Cato’s daughter, Porcia. He and Cicero write eulogies of Cato. Caesar responds from Spain with the polemical Anti-Cato, which many in Rome ridicule; its caricature is seen as so distorted that it enhances Cato’s reputation. Meanwhile, the Spanish campaign proves “peculiarly brutal”; Caesar executes the captured Gnaeus Pompey.

Caesar plans a “universal empire,” extending citizenship, rebuilding Carthage and Corinth, and envisioning massive Roman construction projects. This alarms traditionalists, who see foreigners as unworthy of Roman rights but also view Caesar’s plans as a way of securing permanent majority support for his rule. In September 46 BCE, Cleopatra arrives in Rome with her infant son, Caesarion, and resides in Caesar’s mansion, sparking further fears of perceived decadence. In August 45 BCE, Caesar returns and vacations with her. Rumors spread that he plans to marry her and relocate the capital to Alexandria. He places a golden statue of her in Venus’s temple, and the Senate declares him divus Iulius—Julius the God.

On February 15, 44 BCE, he publicly refuses a crown offered by Antony to quell fears that he means to make himself a monarch. Nevertheless, the Senate appoints him dictator for life. Despite his wife’s nightmares and a soothsayer’s warning, Caesar attends the Senate meeting on March 15. As he sits, approximately 60 senators surround him with a petition and then begin stabbing. Recognizing Brutus among the conspirators, Caesar covers his head and dies.

Led by Brutus and Cassius Longinus, the conspirators refuse to kill Antony and Lepidus; Brutus has convinced them that their mission is solely to prevent Caesar’s dictatorship. Brutus leads them from the hall, raising his bloody dagger and proclaiming liberty restored in the Forum. Instead of acclaim, panic erupts—riots, looting, and citizens barricading themselves indoors.

In April 44 BCE, Cicero mourns at his country villa, devastated by his daughter, Tullia’s, recent death and embittered by his failed second marriage. Though Brutus hailed him after Caesar’s assassination, Cicero grows frustrated as the conspirators fail to dismantle Caesar’s regime and instead flee Rome under pressure from pro-Caesarian demagogues.

Caesar’s 18-year-old grand-nephew, Gaius Octavius, arrives from the Balkans, having learned of his adoption in Caesar’s will as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. After visiting Puteoli, where Cicero dismissively says that he could never become a good citizen, Octavian heads to Rome backed by Caesar’s veterans, claiming his inheritance and the name of Caesar.

Shamed for planning to flee abroad, Cicero returns to Rome to defend the Republic. He builds a coalition by courting the consuls-designate for 43 BCE, Aulus Hirtius and Vibius Pansa, and gives scathing speeches denouncing Mark Antony. Octavian’s prestige grows through favorable omens and popular support after he pays legacies from Caesar’s will. A new civil war begins when Antony marches north to seize Gaul from Decimus Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins, besieging him at Modena.

To counteract Antony, Cicero engineers an alliance between the Senate, the consuls, and Octavian, though he privately jokes about disposing of Octavian later. In April 43 BCE, Senate forces defeat Antony near Modena, but both consuls die in battle. Antony escapes to Gaul and joins forces with Marcus Lepidus. The isolated Decimus Brutus is captured and executed.

With Antony’s power once again growing, Octavian marches on Rome with eight legions, intimidating the Senate into making him consul at age 19. He then joins Antony and Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate, receiving absolute power for five years. They fund their armies through proscriptions. During these executions, Antony sacrifices his uncle, Lepidus his brother, and Octavian consents to Cicero’s name. Cicero, vacillating about escape, is caught and murdered.

In 42 BCE at Philippi in Macedonia, the triumvirs’ forces crush those of Brutus and Cassius, both of whom die by suicide. The battle annihilates the old republican nobility, including Cato’s son. When Porcia learned that both her brother and her husband, Brutus, are dead, she, too, dies by suicide.

Antony takes the East, Octavian the West, and Lepidus receives Africa. Octavian’s mandate to settle veterans involves mass land confiscations that cause social upheaval, banditry, and famine. Exacerbating the situation, Sextus Pompey’s pirate fleet, based in Sicily, blockades Rome’s grain supply. In 41 BCE, Antony’s wife, Fulvia, instigates a rebellion against Octavian, which he brutally suppresses. After Fulvia’s death in 40 BCE, Antony and Octavian reconcile at Brundisium, and Antony marries Octavian’s sister, Octavia. By 36 BCE, Octavian defeats Sextus Pompey and strips Lepidus of power, becoming undisputed Western ruler.

The poet Virgil expresses popular longing for peace and a messianic savior. Antony, who began an affair with Cleopatra in 41 BCE and fathered twins, initially returns to his Roman wife Octavia. After four years, he sends Octavia back to Rome and resumes his relationship with Cleopatra. In 34 BCE, he stages the “Donations of Alexandria,” distributing Eastern kingdoms and Roman provinces to Cleopatra and their children in a royal ceremony.

Capitalizing on fears that Antony seeks kingship, Octavian seizes Antony’s will from the temple of Vesta and publicizes provisions, which Octavian himself may have fabricated, that include Caesarion’s legitimization, lavish legacies for Cleopatra’s children, and Antony’s wish to be buried in Alexandria. After Antony divorces Octavia, Octavian rallies Italy and the western provinces to swear personal allegiance to him against the foreign queen and her lover. On September 2, 31 BCE, Octavian’s fleet defeats Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. They flee to Egypt. In July 30 BCE, Octavian’s legions capture Alexandria. Antony dies by suicide, followed by Cleopatra nine days later. Octavian executes Caesarion and makes Egypt his personal domain, using its captured treasure to fund his new order.

On January 13, 27 BCE, Octavian stages the “Restoration of the Republic,” announcing that he will return power to the Senate. In a prearranged response, senators beg him to retain control and grant him a massive provincial command encompassing most of the army. They honor him with the unprecedented name “Augustus,” meaning “revered” and recalling Rome’s sacred founding. He carefully suppresses memory of his ruthless past, melting down silver statues and leaving the years between Philippi and Actium blank in official records.

Using Egyptian treasure, Augustus funds peaceful veteran settlements by purchasing rather than confiscating land. He promotes an ideology of returning to ancient virtues, supported by poets like Virgil and Horace. He rules not (officially) as king or dictator but as princeps, “first citizen,” basing authority on accumulated prestige rather than formal office. In AD 14, after over 40 years of rule, Augustus dies peacefully. His ashes are placed in his grand mausoleum on the Campus Martius, an area he transformed with monuments including the Altar of Peace and a marble voting hall used for spectacles rather than elections. The Romans have traded freedom for peace and prosperity. The Republic has definitively ended.