Pliny writes of seven different medicinal remedies using stibium, a sulfide of antimony.

Early writings of Dioscorides, his near contemporary, mention metallic antimony.

The Romans, who call mercury argentum vivum, living silver, employ it, unfortunately for those using it, in cosmetics.

Pliny and Dioscorides write about the recovery of quicksilver from cinnabar by distillation and condensation of the vapor, the forerunner of modern methods of metallurgical treatment.

Pliny also describes the trade between Spain and Rome in mercury and cinnabar, which is also employed as a pigment or coloring because of its attractive red hue.

The element's English name, lead, is Anglo-Saxon; the symbol Pb derives from the Latin.

The Romans also use lead for tablets, solder, coins, and even cooking utensils, which result in the recognition of lead poisoning in the time of Augustus Caesar.

Virgil, encouraged by the diplomat Pollio, begins in 45 BCE to compose the ten epic poems known as the “Eclogues.”

The Roman calendar is in error by several months.

Romans have used various lunar-solar calendars supposedly based only on observation, but in fact influenced by political considerations.

Roman military and political leader Julius Caesar had in 63 BCE been elected Pontifex Maximus, and one of his roles as such was settling the calendar.

Recognizing the need for a stable, predictable calendar, Caesar had ordered an astronomer, Sosigenes, to restructure the calendar in 46 BCE.

The year 46 BCE was given 445 days, to compensate for past errors and to bring the calendar into line with the seasons, and every common year hereafter is to have 365 days.

Every fourth year, starting with 45 BCE, is to be designated a leap year of 366 days, during which February, which commonly has twenty-eight days, is extended by one day. (This Julian Calendar will subsequently be modified by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 into the modern Gregorian calendar).

The Julian calendar begins on January 1, 45 BCE.

Caesar’s complete overhaul of the old Roman calendar will prove to be one of his most longlasting and influential reforms.

Caesar institutes numerous other reforms, such as limiting the distribution of free grain, founding citizen colonies, and enlarging the Senate from six hundred members to nine hundred.

The commander of each legion is made directly responsible to the Senate.

At the same time he reduces debts, revises the tax structure, and extends Roman citizenship to non-Italians.

These popular reforms, while meeting genuine needs, also strengthen Caesar's control of the state at the expense of his opponents, whom he attempts to placate with ostentatious clemency.

Caesar is honored by portrayal on coins and by the erection of a temple to his clemency.

An accomplished orator and writer, Caesar introduces the genre of personal war commentaries in his two (surviving) works, On the Gallic War and On the Civil War, lucid narratives that, while holding the reader’s interest, serve as subtle propaganda for Caesar, who probably writes his Commentaries in this year.

While he is still campaigning in Hispania, the Senate begins bestowing honors on him in absentia.

Named dictator for life, Caesar had not proscribed his enemies, instead pardoning almost all, and there is no serious public opposition to him.

One of Caesar’s greatest supporters, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the son of a prominent politician of the same name, had joined the Caesarian side during the civil war between Caesar and the adherents of Pompey, served as praetor in 49, governor of Hither Spain in 48–47, and consul in 46.

In 45, he replaces Mark Antony as Caesar's magister equitum (“master of the cavalry”), effectively deputy in the dictatorship.

Great games and celebrations are held on April 21 to honor Caesar’s victory at Munda.

Caesar returns in September to Rome to start putting the Greco-Roman world in order.

He files his will, naming his grandnephew and adopted son Gaius Octavius (Octavian) as the heir to everything, including his title.

The son of Gaius Octavius the Elder and Atia, the niece of Julius Caesar, Octavian had, at twelve, entered the public-speaking arena in 51 with a speech he delivered at his grandmother’s funeral.

Caesar also writes that if Octavian predeceases him, the next heir in succession is to be Marcus Junius Brutus, whose father had been a legati to Pompey the Great and whose mother, Servilia Caepionis, the half-sister of Cato the Younger, had later become Julius Caesar's mistress.

Though Brutus had taken the side of Pompey in the civil war, Caesar has forgiven him, nominating him in 45 to be a praetor.

Also, in June of this year, Brutus had divorced his wife and remarried his first cousin, Porcia Catonis, daughter of the late Cato.

The Forum of Caesar, with its Temple of Venus Genetrix, the ancestress of the Julian family to which Caesar belongs, is built among many other public works.

Cleopatra VII, Macedonian queen of Hellenistic Egypt, has been in Rome since late 47, accompanied by her husband-brother Ptolemy XIV, and a golden statue of her has been placed by Caesar's orders in the temple of Venus Genetrix.

Cleopatra and Caesar had become lovers during his stay in Egypt between 48 and 47, despite the thirty years separating the two.

On June 23, 47, Cleopatra had given birth to a child, Ptolemy Caesar (nicknamed "Caesarion" which means "little Caesar").

Cleopatra had claimed Caesar was the father and wished him to name the boy his heir, but Caesar has refused, choosing Octavian instead.

Caesar installs her in a villa that he owns beyond the Tiber.

Famed for her beauty, Cleopatra reputedly bathes in ass's milk and uses henna to increase the redness of her hair.

Fated to become Egypt's final Ptolemaic queen and the last Pharaoh, she is separated from the red-haired pharaoh Ramesses II by nearly twelve hundred years.

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.