Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus

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Template:Cleanup-date Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus (died 43 BC) was a Roman politician and general of the 1st century BC and one of Julius Caesar's assassins.

He was a legate in Caesar's army during the Gallic wars, but when the dictator returned to Rome after the final defeat of the Republican faction in the battle of Munda (45 BC), Decimus Brutus joined the "Liberatores", a conspiracy plotting to assassinate Caesar. Apparently, Caesar continued to trust in him and, since he was a relative, mentioned him in the will he made in October 45. Moreover, in 44 BC, he was elected praetor by the centuriate assembly, by personal appointment of Caesar. Decimus Brutus was chosen to be praetor peregrinus and destined to be the governor of Cisalpine Gaul in the following year.

On the Ides of March (March 15), when Caesar vacillated unsure of whether he ought to go to the Senate, Decimus Brutus persuaded him not to disappoint the Senate which had been in session for some time awaiting his arrival. His purpose was to send a signal to rest of the conspirators, waiting in the Forum. When Caesar arrived in Pompey's theatre for the senate meeting, Decimus and the rest of the conspirators attacked and assassinated him.

The assassins received an amnesty the next day, issued by the senate at the instigation of Mark Antony, Caesar's fellow consul. But the situation was not peaceful: Rome's population and the legionaries of Caesar's legions wanted to see the conspirators punished. The group decided to lie low and Decimus used his office of praetor peregrinus to stay away from Rome. The climate of reconciliation soon passed and slowly the conspirators were starting to feel the strain of the assassination. Thus, at the beginning of 43 BC, Decimus hurried to his province and started to levy his own troops. He was ordered by the senate to surrender his province to Antony but refused. This was the act of provocation to which Antony was only too happy to respond. With his own political situation on the verge of disaster, and himself declared public enemy, defeating Decimus was for Antony a way to regain his ascendancy and get control of the strategically important Italian Gaul.

The first confrontation occurred on April 14 at the battle of Forum Gallorum, where Antony's troops besieged Decimus' army in Mutina. Antony was defeated by the forces of the consul Pansa and Octavian, then only 19 years old but already a propraetor. A second battle on 21 April at Mutina resulted in a further defeat for Antony and Pansa's death. Despite this luck, Decimus Brutus decided to flee to Macedonia, where Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus were garrisoned. He left Italy, abandoning his legions, but was killed shortly afterwards without reaching his fellow assassins.

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