, appointed prefect of morals , awarded tribunician sacrosanctity , and honored by portrayal on coins and by the erection of a temple to his clemency. Caesar introduced numerous reforms, such as limiting the distribution of free grain, founding citizen colonies, introducing the Julian calendar, and enlarging the Senate. At the same time he reduced debts, revised the tax structure, and extended Roman citizenship to non-Italians. While meeting genuine needs, these popular reforms also strengthened Caesar's control of the state at the expense of his opponents, whom he tried to placate with ostentatious clemency. In 44 BC, Caesar, likening himself to Alexander the Great, began to plan the conquest of Parthia. Fearing that he would become an absolute king, many whom he had earlier pardoned conspired to murder him. The conspirators, led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, stabbed him at a meeting of the Senate in Pompey's theater on Mar. 15 (the Ides of March), 44 BC. Falling at the foot of Pompey's statue, Caesar addressed Brutus in Greek: "Even you, lad?" Caesar was an accomplished orator and writer. His two surviving works, On the Gallic War and On the Civil War, introduced the genre of personal war commentaries. Subtle propaganda for Caesar, they are also lucid narratives that hold the reader. Dynamic, witty, urbane, and highly intelligent, Caesar aroused loyalty and admiration among both contemporaries and later generations. Nevertheless, his immense ambition and the contempt he displayed for the republican traditions of his opponents drove them to desperate measures against him. He therefore left Rome's great problems for his adopted son and heir, the future Augustus. Caesar made his way to praetorship by 62 BC and many of the senate felt him a dangerous, ambitious man. Because of this, they deprived him of a triumph after his praetorian command in Spain (61-60 BC) and they also did their best to keep him out of consuls...
