Caius Iulius Caesar is assassinated in the theater of Pompey, acting seat of the Roman Senate on this date in 44 B.C. Caesar, Dictator for Life of the Roman Republic, had earned the enmity and distrust of a faction of the Senators, who were alarmed by the breadth, speed and consequences to Senatorial power, for Caesar's political reforms; and by the indifference Caesar showed to the Senators in implementing them.
Caesar's death then led to a brief period of equilibrium between the assassins, who called themselves the Liberators, and Caesar's supporters, led by Marc Antony, and Caesar's nephew, and adopted son, Caius Octavian Caesar.
The advantage soon shifted to Antony and Octavian, beginning as early as Caesar's funeral. the Liberators were forced to flee, and within a short time, and for the second time in less than a decade, civil war erupted. When it was over, the assassins were dead, and Octavian and Antony divided the lands of the Roman Republic between them. Eventually they too went to war. When that conflict ended, Antony was dead [a suicide], and so was the Roman Republic. Octavian, became an emperor in all but name, and the name Caesar became Roman shorthand for Emperor; the title being used by successors with no family connection to the Juliae. The title was also exported to foreign lands: Germany [Kaiser], and Russia [Tsar].