44 BC

Year 44 BC was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events

By place

Rome

• Consuls: Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius
• March 15 (Roman Calendar) — (the Ides of March) — Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is assassinated by a group of Roman senators, amongst them Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Caesar's Massilian naval commander, Decimus Brutus. Caesar's famous last quote — coined by William Shakespeare in his play Julius Caesar — was most likely not spoken (see: "Et tu, Brute?").
• March 20 — Caesar's funeral.
• Early April — Octavian returns from Apollonia in Dalmatia to Rome to take up Caesar's inheritance, against advice from Atia (his mother and Caesar's niece) and consular stepfather Phillipus.
• April 18 to April 21 — Octavian engages in charm offensive with consular Cicero who is fulminating against Mark Antony.
• June — Antony granted a five-year governorship of northern and central Transalpine Gaul (France) and Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy).
• September 2 — Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.
• September 2 — First of Cicero's Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Antony. He will make 14 of them over the next several months.
• December — Antony besieges Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus in Mutina (Modena), with Octavian, an ally of Decimus, one of his uncle's assassins, close by.

Europe

• Comosicus succeeds Burebista as king of Dacia.

Births

Deaths

• March 15 — Julius Caesar assassinated in the Senate
• July 26 — Pharaoh Ptolemy XIV of Egypt (last date mentioned alive)
• Burebista, King of Dacia
• Antipater the Idumaean, procurator of Judaea and father of Herod the Great