Assassination of Julius Caesar

On March 15, 44 BCE, a group of senators including Brutus and Cassius stabbed Caesar twenty-three times on the floor of the Senate. They believed they were saving the Republic, but the assassination triggered a cascade of civil wars that would ultimately destroy it. Caesar's adopted heir Octavian would emerge from the chaos to become Rome's first emperor — the very Augustus who ordered the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.