At plenary meeting of the Senate in Rome, on the Ides of March 44 BC Julius Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times and killed. A death that also forever kills the most grandiose plan ever conceived to transform the ancient world. A murder, that despite in many ways being predictable, in other ways still remains totally inexplicable: Valerio Massimo Manfredi explores all of the mysteries, and with relentless rigour puts together the pieces of an intricate and disturbing puzzle.
From the sinister prophecy of the soothsayer Spurinna (Beware the Ides of March!) to the decision by Caesar to give up his bodyguards just days before the ambush, from the machinations of the conspirators to the incredible race against time of the loyal Publius Sextius Baculus to save his leader, through battles and ciphers, passionate loves and low vendettas, Manfredi portrays characters of absolute greatness and gives us a minute by the minute account of the last forty-eight hours of the life of Julius Caesar; critical hours that marked forever the fate of one man and, perhaps, that of all of us.