Octavian has meanwhile built up a private…

Sino-Roman relations had started first on an indirect basis during the second century BCE.

In 130 BCE, with the embassies of the Han Dynasty to Central Asia, following the reports of the ambassador Zhang Qian (who had originally been sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu, but in vain), the Chinese emperor Wudi became interested in developing relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia.

The Chinese had subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria.

Trade with the Roman Empire soon followed, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians) from the first century BCE.

The Romans are not aware of silkworms and think the fiber a vegetable product.

The Dacia of King Burebista stretches from the Southern Bug river in modern Ukraine to the Danube in modern Slovakia, and from the Balkan mountains in modern Bulgaria to Zakarpattia Oblast (Transcarpathia) in modern Ukraine.

Burebista, widely considered to be the greatest king of Dacia, had in 48 sided with Pompey during his struggle against Julius Caesar in the Roman civil war.

Caesar, preparing a Parthian war to avenge Crassus, apparently had planned also to invade Getian territory before his assassination in 44; later in this year, Getian conspirators murder Burebista in a court plot and divide his kingdom into four, then five, smaller polities.

(The real name of Burebista is lost, but his fame will be evoked by the Greek writers under the name of Byrebistas.)

Caesar tightly regulates the purchase of state-subsidized grain, and forbids those who can afford privately supplied grain from purchasing from the grain dole.

He makes plans for the distribution of land to his veterans, and for the establishment of veteran colonies throughout the Roman world which now includes all of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Numidia, Macedonia, Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and all of the Mediterranean islands.

Caesar had in 59 already resurrected the city of Capua, which the republican Roman regime more than one hundred and fifty years earlier had deprived of its juridical corporate personality; in 44, he reestablishes as Roman colonies two other great cities, Carthage in North Africa and Corinth in Greece, both of which his predecessors had destroyed a century before.

The Roman Senate, electing Caesar consul for a third consecutive term, had given Caesar the title Pater Patriae ("Father of the Fatherland"), appointing him dictator a third time, then nominated him for nine consecutive one-year terms as dictator, effectually making him dictator for ten years.

He is also given censorial authority as praefectus morum (prefect of morals) for three years.

The unemployed Mark Antony, his career in eclipse since his appointment as Master of the Horse in 47-48, is chosen Caesar's co-consul for 44.

On February 15, during the Lupercalia festival, Antony publicly offers Caesar a diadem, an event fraught with meaning: a diadem is a symbol of a king, and in refusing it, Caesar demonstrates that he does not intend to assume the throne.

Continuing his reforms, Caesar issues an edict banning the nighttime movement of heavy wagons, Rome’s streets having been widened to accommodate their growing number, and begins planning the conquest of Parthia.

The Senate now names Caesar Dictator Perpetuus, "dictator for life" or "perpetual dictator".

Roman mints print a denarius coin with this title and his profile on one side, and with an image of the goddess Ceres and Caesar's title of Augur Pontifex Maximus on the reverse.

Caesar, who is apparently moving toward a monarchical system, is also awarded tribunician sacrosanctity.

Around this time, many senators began to fear Caesar's growing power.

Many of those he had earlier pardoned, fearing that he will make himself an absolute king, conspire to assassinate him.

Gaius Cassius Longinus, reconciled to Caesar, becomes praetor peregrinus and is promised the governorship of Syria for the following year.

The appointment of his junior, Brutus, as praetor urbanus deeply offends him, and he becomes one of the busiest conspirators.

Brutus, pressured into joining the conspiracy by the other senators, also discovers messages written on the busts of his ancestors.

Apparently a sincere patriot (within the confines of the aristocratic republican tradition) who hopes—naively—for the restoration of the free republic without further violence, Brutus scrupulously opposes the assassination of anyone except Caesar.

Cassius argues for the killing of Lepidus and Antony as well, but Brutus overrules him, saying the action is an execution not a political coup.

Cassius and Brutus lead some sixty conspirators—former friends and old enemies, honorable patriots and men with grievances—in stabbing Caesar to death at a meeting of the Senate in Pompey's theater on March 15 (the Ides of March), 44 BCE.

Cleopatra behaves with a discretion that she is later to discard, and her presence seems to have occasioned little comment; officially, she is negotiating a treaty of alliance.

The Optimate orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, uninvolved in the plot against Caesar, mentions her in none of his contemporary letters, though his later references to her show that he regarded her with rancor, as did most Romans.

Brutus and Cassius, referring to themselves and their fellow conspirators as “Liberators,” expect all Romans to rejoice with them in the rebirth of “freedom.”

To the Roman people, however, the freedom of the governing class is a non-issue; the armies (especially in the west) had been attached to Caesar; and the Senate is full of Caesarians at all levels, cowed but biding their time.

The Roman middle and lower classes, with whom Caesar had been immensely popular, and had been since Gaul and before, are enraged that a small group of aristocrats has killed their champion.

Antony, the surviving consul, whom Brutus had been too scrupulous to murder with his patron, had escaped Rome dressed as a slave, fearing that the dictator's assassination would be the start of a bloodbath among his supporters.

When this does not occur, he soon returns to Rome, discussing a truce with the assassins' faction.

Following a speech by Cicero in the Senate, an amnesty is agreed for the assassins on March 17.

Antony delivers an "inflammatory" eulogy at Caesar's funeral, mounting public opinion against the assassins.

Brutus had been approached after Caesar’s assassination with a compromise; if Caesar were declared a tyrant, then all of Caesars' appointments to the Senate would be null and void.

This would mean that Brutus would no longer be a Senator and elections would have to be held.

Conversely, if he agreed to recognize and honor Caesar's will, he and the other assassins would be granted amnesty and retain their positions.

Brutus had accepted the offer, and Caesar has not been declared a tyrant.

Part of the offer is that Brutus had to leave Rome, which he does, removing to Crete.

Mark Antony had been drifting apart from Caesar, but now capitalizes on the grief of the Roman mob and threatens to unleash them on the Optimates, perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself.

He gradually gains control of the city and the official machinery, and the “liberators” withdraw to the East.

However, Octavian, receiving news of his inheritance, returns in May from his academic and military studies in Apollonia.

To make a successful entry into the echelons of the Roman political hierarchy, Octavian cannot rely on his limited funds.

After a warm welcome by Caesar's soldiers at Brundisium, Octavian demands a portion of the funds that had been allotted by Caesar for the intended war against Parthia.

This amounts to seven hundred million sesterces stored at Brundisium, the staging ground in Italy for military operations in the east.

(A later senatorial investigation into the disappearance of the public funds will make no action against Octavian, since he had subsequently used that money to raise troops against the Senate's arch enemy, Mark Antony.)

Octavian makes another bold move when he appropriates the annual tribute that had been sent from Rome's Near Eastern province to Italy without any official permission to do so.

Octavian begins to bolster his personal forces with Caesar's veteran legionaries and troops designated for the Parthian war, gathering support by emphasizing his status as heir to Caesar.

Octavian's presence and newly acquired funds attract many on his march to Rome through Italy, winning over Caesar's former veterans stationed in Campania.

By June he has gathered an army of three thousand loyal veterans, paying each a salary of five hundred denarii, and soon challenges Antony for the position of leader of the Caesarians.

Although he is not yet 20, he proves an accomplished politician, attracting loyalty as a Caesarian while cooperating against Antony with the Senate, which, under Cicero's vigorous leadership, now turns against the consul.

A more broad-minded champion of republicanism than such oligarchic contemporaries as Cato the Younger, Cicero looks beyond his own self-interest and has returned to politics with renewed vigor upon Caesar’s death.

Antony had lost the support of many Romans and supporters of Caesar when he at first opposed the motion to elevate Caesar to divine status.

Octavian, officially changing his name to Gaius Julius Caesar, fails to persuade Antony to relinquish Caesar's money to him, but manages to win support from Caesarian sympathizers during the summer.

Egypt’s Macedonian dynast Cleopatra VII, her campaign for power ended by Caesar’s assassination, retires to Egypt to await the outcome of the next round in the Roman political struggle.

An inscription mentioning her younger brother Ptolemy as alive is dated July 26, 44 BCE, but he soon follows Caesar in death.

It has been assumed but remains uncertain that Cleopatra poisoned her co-ruler to replace him with Ptolemy XV Caesarion, her son by Caesar who she proclaims co-ruler on September 2, 44, and whom his mother intends to support as successor of his father.