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The Roman Brotherhood of Assassins, known at the time as the Liberalis Circulum (English: Circle of liberals), were a Brotherhood of Assassins who operated within the territory controlled by Rome during the times of the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. The members of the circle were known as Liberatores.
Centuries later, the branch revived as the Italian Brotherhood of Assassins.
History
Foundation
One of the earliest known branches of the Assassin Order, the Liberalis Circulum was founded early in Rome’s history. One of its founder, Lugos, traveled to Egypt to recover two Pieces of Eden – the Ankh and the Scepter of Aset – which had been found in a pyramid by Roman plunderers. Returning to Rome via the Mediterranean Sea, Lugos died when a waterway on his ship accidentally opened, causing the vessel to sink; its cargo lost.[1]
Roman Republic
In 44 BCE, forty Senators, secretly Assassins, conspired against the Roman general and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, whose appointment had been supported by the Templars. The conspirators met in a secret cave underneath where the Santa Maria in Aracoeli would later stand and planned the assassination, led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.[2]
Deeper inside the cave, Brutus discovered an ancient vault, where he received visions of Caesar's future assassination. This motivated Brutus more, and on 15 March 44 BCE, the Assassins stabbed Caesar to death.[2]
In the conflict that followed Caesar’s death, Brutus was eventually defeated in battle at Philippi by Marcus Antonius, and committed suicide shortly thereafter. When the Roman Assassins found his body, they tried to revive him using the Shroud of Eden, however, he was only revived for a brief moment, before ultimately succumbing to his wounds once more.[3]
Roman Empire
On 24 January 41, the Roman Assassin Leonius killed Roman Emperor Caligula with a dagger.[4]
In 259, Aquilus, a Gaul Assassin based in Lugdunum, was tasked with assassinating two Generals and a Senator, and then ordered to retrieve an artifact in possession of his cousin Accipiter, an Assassin and a General of the Alemanni tribes. As Aquilus reached his third target, the General Gracchus, his intent was discovered and he was stabbed by his own target. Fortunately for the Assassin, Aquilus was saved by his cousin who gave him the Ankh, which had been finally recovered, centuries after Lugos' death. The Gaul took back the artifact to Lugdunum, but it was then stolen by the Assassins' ancestral enemies, with Caïus Fulvus Vultur killing Aquilus' father, Lucius.[5]
Aquilus tracked Vultur to Rome, where he eliminated him and his fellow conspirators, and retrieved the artifact. Later, the arrest and execution of Aquilus was ordered by the prefect of his home city, but even after Aquilus' death, the artifact was successfully hidden. It was this same Prefect with whom Cuervo, an Iberian Assassin sent to preserve the Circle's interests in Lugdunum from the Germanic armies raiding the Empire, and Accipiter were negotiating the spare of the Roman city in exchange for a significant tribute to the Alemanni.[1]
In the 4th century, an Assassin operated in the Roman Empire during the rise of Constantine I as emperor, witnessing the foundation of Constantinople.[6]
Members
- Lugos
- Gaius Cassius Longinus
- Marcus Junius Brutus
- Publius Volumnius
- 38 other senators involved in Caesar's assassination
- Leonius
- Lucius (Gaul)
- Aquilus (Gaul)
- Accipiter (German)
- Cuervo (Iberian)
- Roman Assassin
Allies
Trivia
- Liberalis Circulum actually is a wrong Latin form, as the correct one would be Liberalis Circulus.
References
