Sic semper tyrannis

Well, I wasn't expecting that! Julius Caesar ending up dead on the Senate floor, covered in knife wounds. Who'd have guessed?

Rome came to a mostly satisfying ending. Vorenus has managed to be at every important event throughout the fall of the Republic, but for perfectly good reasons manages to be away from this one. Everything that seemed to be going swimmingly - Caesar's dictatorship, Vorenus's private and public life - tumbles in ruin while what seemed to be beyond redemption - Pullo - ends on a high note.

For the record (and to save you watching the second series, if you don't really want to), here's what happened to some of the assassins, and others (according to Wikipedia, anyway). Bear in mind Caesar died in 44BC:

• Decimus Brutus: killed 43BC in the first round of the new civil wars following the assassination.
• Cassius: wrongly believed Brutus had lost the first Battle of Philippi against Octavian and Antony, and ordered his freeman Pindarus to slay him, 42BC.
• Marcus Junius Brutus: committed suicide 42BC following defeat at the second (and final) Battle of Philippi.
• Gaius Trebonius: murdered 43BC in events unrelated to the assassination.
• Cicero (not actually an assassin, but wished he had been): proscribed by Antony and rubbed out by Antony’s hitmen, 43BC.

Do you start to see a theme (and a timespan) developing? And one last key player in all this:

• The republic: by my calculations, not seen again until after World War II.

What didn't satisfy in Rome was the meeting of the uberbitches Servilia and Atia, where the latter is summoned by the former to gloat about what's happening over on the Capitoline. It was too reminiscent of monologuing baddies in lesser dramas. But I did enjoy the significant glances between the triumphant Servilia and surly Octavian. She has just made an enemy of the future Emperor Augustus. Oh man, is she in trouble ...