Caesar assassination site confirmed

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ROME, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Spanish researchers say they've identified the exact spot in Rome where Emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.

Scientists at the Spanish National Research Council said the key to the discovery was a concrete structure 10 feet wide and more than 6 feet high, placed by order of Augustus, the adoptive son and successor of Julius Caesar, to condemn the assassination of his father.

The location of the structure -- in the archaeological area of Torre Argentina in the historic center of the Roman capital -- confirms Caesar was stabbed right at the bottom of the Curia of Pompey while he was sitting in a chair presiding over a meeting of Roman Senate, a release from the research council reported Wednesday.

"We always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia of Pompey on March 15, 44 B.C., because the classical texts pass on so, but so far no material evidence of this fact, so often depicted in historicist painting and cinema, had been recovered," said Antonio Monterroso, CSIC researcher from the Institute of History of the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Classical sources refer to the closure, years after the murder, of the Curia.

"We know for sure that the place where Julius Caesar presided over that session of the Senate, and where he fell stabbed, was closed with a rectangular structure organized under four walls delimiting a Roman concrete filling," the researchers said.