When was the title « Dictator perpetuus » given to Caesar ?

Epigraphic and literary sources attest that Caesar received the title Dictator Perpetuus in 44 B.C.E., after January 26, when he celebrated an ovatio as Dictator ΠΙΙ, and before February 15. These sources are examined by Broughton in the second volume of his Magistrates of the Roman Republic, and again in the third volume, which appeared in 1986, where he rejects Alföldi's hypothesis that it was a sudden decision late in February 44 or early in March, after the failure of Caesar's plan to become rex at the Lupercalia. Alföldi bases his arguments upon a new study of the coinage of 44, and in particular interprets a symbol on a coin of M. Mettius as a representation of the diadem which Caesar refused at the Lupercalia and dedicated to Jupiter. The inscription on the coin reads DICT. QVART. and this, together with a study of its place in the series of coins of 44, leads him to place the assumption of perpetual dictatorship at the end of February or the beginning of March. Broughton however observes that the identification of the symbol in the coin examined by Alföldi is a technical numismatic problem, since the straight ribbon of the supposed diadem may be the result of either chance damage or deliberate alteration1. It is a fact that Caesar was already Dictator Perpetuus at the time of the Lupercalia on February 15, as we learn from Cicero : At etiam adscribí iussit in fastis ad Lupercalia... C. Caesari dictatori perpetuo M. Antonium consulem populi iussu regnum detulisse; Caesarem uti noluisse {Phil. 2, 87). Caesar's change to the of Dictator Perpetuus at that time, Broughton observes, was note an irregular and sudden change in the middle of a term, but one for which he prepared. As Raubitschek shows, after the reform of the calendar, in the autumn of 46, the third dictatorship ended in February 45 (although the dictatorships had become annual, they were formulated in months in the traditional way), and the fourth one in February 442.

January 26 and February 15 are therefore today generally accepted as the terminus post quern and the terminus ante quern Caesar received the title « Dictator Perpetuus »3.

A recent examination of Caesar's decrees concerning the Jews quoted by Josephus in his Antiquities (Ant. XIV, 190-212) now enables us to suggest a new date for the terminus ante quern Caesar received the title Dictator Perpetuus.