In Rome today a group of ancient history enthusiasts will drape themselves in togas and re-enact that most infamous act of political murder: the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44BC.

The re-enactors will be able to do their anniversary deed on the actual site of the assassination, now a sunken square called the Largo Torre di Argentina. It has just been refurbished and opened as a major new archaeological site in a renovation financed by the Bulgari jewellery company.

Rome’s storied civilisation was born in a torrent of blood

Since it was first excavated by Mussolini’s Fascist regime in the 1930s, the site has been somewhat neglected, and became a sanctuary for feral cats.( Now confined to a safe space in a corner of the renovated site). Containing a new museum, complete with statues found on the site, and criss-crossed by raised walkways, the refurbished Largo is an extra ‘must see’ for visitors to the eternal city.

Located in central Rome near the Pantheon, the Largo is an archaeological jewel containing the ruins of four temples as well as the giant theatre built by Caesar’s vanquished and murdered rival, Pompey the Great. It was while attending a meeting of the Senate in the theatre’s Curia that Caesar met his own bloody end.

The story of the assassination is an object lesson in the law of unintended consequences. It should be carefully studied by anyone contemplating the removal – violently or otherwise – of any Putin-like dictator in today’s world: be careful what you wish for. For the ultimate result of Caesar’s murder was the exact opposite of what the conspirators wanted to achieve. The dictator’s death paved the way for the rise of an even more efficient and brutal successor.

The sixty or so senators recruited by the leaders of the anti-Caesar conspiracy, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, had varied motives for wanting rid of the triumphant warlord who had just been made dictator for life. Some were disgruntled former supporters of Pompey; some, like Brutus, were principled patricians who wanted to restore the Roman republic in all its pristine purity. Others were personally affronted by Caesar’s arrogance and dictatorial ambitions and resented his huge popularity with the Roman plebs.

Fresh from his military triumphs in Gaul and his tentative incursion into Britain, Caesar was master of all he surveyed when his enemies struck him down. Drunk with his own power and glory, the dictator was blind to omens of his impending doom – ignoring both the prophetic nightmares of his wife Calpurnia, and the predictions of a soothsayer as he strode to meet the Senate in his pomp.

As with his portrayal of Richard III, though much mocked for his historical howlers, Shakespeare broadly sticks to the known real facts in his dramatic portrayal of the killing. Caesar did notice ‘lean and hungry’ Cassius’s plotting, he was persuaded to ignore Calpurnia’s pleas and attend the Senate and he did brush aside the seer who warned him of his impending fate.

As one conspirator detained Caesar’s protege Mark Antony outside the Curia, inside, the other plotters clustered around him. When one assassin, Cimber, clutched at his toga, causing Caesar to complain of his ‘violence’, another, Casca, struck the first of 23 stab wounds found on the dictator’s body. Recognising Brutus with the line (spoken in Greek) ‘Even you, my child’, Caesar covered his face with his cloak and gave up the struggle, falling at the feet of Pompey’s statue.

Failing to persuade Caesar’s many angry fans in the Forum that they had justly killed a tyrant, Brutus, Cassius and the other conspirators fled, leaving a power vacuum in Rome to be filled by Antony and Caesar’s young grandnephew Octavian. The chief assassins famously fell on their swords after their armies were defeated at Phillipi in northern Greece.

After years of civil war between the assassins and Caesar’s avengers, it was Octavian who emerged on top of the pile of bodies, hunting down and killing not only the conspirators, but also his former ally Antony. In a bloody purge of the Senate, he executed hundreds of rivals and rebels, proclaiming himself as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and making very sure that he would not share his forebear’s fate. As for the site of the assassination, Augustus sealed it up in concrete and it was eventually used as a latrine.

The toga-clad reenactors of the Gruppo Storico Romano will bear Caesar’s ‘body’ from Pompey’s Curia through the streets of Rome to a picturesque mock funeral in the Forum this afternoon. They will be marking an uncomfortable truth: that Rome’s storied civilisation was born in a torrent of blood. Caesar failed to heed the warnings about the Ides of March. Two thousand years on, we should learn the lesson of what happened following his death: that ousting one dictator can lead to far worse consequences.