First in Recorded History: The Autopsy of Julius Caesar | A Body Bags Special Report

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On March 15th in 44 B.C. Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator, was assassinated by a group of senators who stabbed him 23 times during a Senate meeting.

The senators claimed Caesar's concentration of power threatened the Roman Republic. However, their efforts to restore the Republic failed, and the aftermath led to a civil war and the rise of the Roman Empire. His death also led to the earliest recorded autopsy in history.

In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and special guest co-host Dave Mack discuss the purpose of autopsies, Caesar's life, and leadership, the details of how he was attacked, the injuries sustained, and how this event shaped the course of history.

Show Notes:

0:00 - Intro

1:12 - Background and overview

2:35 - What’s the purpose of an autopsy?

4:05 - Caesar’s life and work as a leader

7:15 - The day of Caesar’s assassination

9:15 - How the attack happened

10:50 - Caesar’s autopsy

13:20 - After someone is stabbed multiple times does blood keep flowing or will it eventually stop after a few hours?

17:10 - Could the doctor have attributed Caesar’s death to blood loss?

20:10 - What was the assassination plan for Caesar? Were there other injuries and what was Caesar's condition afterward?

22:10 - Where was the autopsy done?

23:40 - The start of 3D modeling

25:30 - How this event shaped history

27:05 - Outro

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think a lot of us have heard that phrase at 2 Brute, that term is actually a phrase
0:26.5	that Shakespeare penned when he was writing one of his best-known plays regarding Caesar. It played
0:34.3	during the Elizabethan times and it captivated the crowd because it was the story of a leader
0:39.9	that was slain by those in his inner circle. Of course the phrase itself points to Brutus,
0:46.6	who was certainly in Caesar's inner circle. But is it really how his death happened? And of course
0:54.4	we like to talk about death. And today we're going to talk about the assassination of Julius
0:59.2	Caesar and his autopsy. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.
1:09.8	Great Caesar's Ghost, Dave Mack. I want to have a conversation with you today about a historical
1:16.4	figure going back a couple thousand years now. We're going to talk about the death of Julius Caesar
1:22.0	at the hands of those that surrounded him in a very public area otherwise known as the Forum.
1:28.7	You up for this Dave Mack. I'd say March is upon us and a lot of people like me, all we know about
1:35.2	Julius Caesar is what Shakespeare wrote. When did Shakespeare write Julius Caesar? 1599, 1600,
1:41.6	somewhere in there for the opening of the Globe Theater. You're talking about something that was
1:46.5	written a long time after the event took place. So you've got a lot of memories. You've got a
1:53.2	lot of scattered stories and you don't know the truth from the lie. And that's why it's so fascinating
1:59.0	when you told me that this autopsy, I thought you were making it up, but I thought they don't do
2:04.1	autopsy's back then. He's making this up. What if we did an autopsy? That kind of thing. When you
2:08.9	told me that this was the first autopsy, I thought, holy moly, we've got a conspiracy. We've got
2:16.5	being stabbed in the back by his best friends, by people he trusted, by people he believed in.
2:21.9	That's what the setting is for all of the rigour roll that then proceeded. Everything that took
2:26.7	place centered around politics, power, money, throw sex in there. And if they had rock and roll,
2:33.3	it'd be rock and roll. This had everything. One of the interesting things here is it brings us
	...

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