After crossing the Rubicon in 49, Caesar defeated all his enemies and had himself declared dictator for life. Mocking Sulla by saying that “Sulla did not know his ABCs when he laid down his dictatorship,” Caesar clearly did not plan to relinquish the Dictatorship, so a gang of senators led by Brutus and Cassius murdered him in 44. After the Ides of March, Caesar’s heirs Octavian and Mark Antony* combined to defeat the remnants of the Senate, and then waged a civil war against each other for control of the empire. Victorious over all his enemies, Octavian transformed himself into Augustus in
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