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Millennium: 1st millennium BC
Centuries: 2nd century BC – 1st century BC – 1st century
Decades: 70s BC 60s BC 50s BC – 40s BC – 30s BC 20s BC 10s BC
Years: 47 BC 46 BC 45 BC – 44 BC – 43 BC 42 BC 41 BC
44 BC by topic
Politics
State leaders – Sovereign states
Birth and death categories
Births – Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments – Disestablishments
The Roman empire in 44 BC (in dark and light red and orange)
Ab urbe condita 710
Armenian calendar N/A
Bahá'í calendar -1887 – -1886
Bengali calendar -636
Berber calendar 907
Buddhist calendar 501
Burmese calendar -681
Byzantine calendar 5465 – 5466
Chinese calendar 丙子年
(2593/2653)
— to —
丁丑年(2594/2654)
Coptic calendar -327 – -326
Ethiopian calendar -51 – -50
Hebrew calendar 3717 – 3718
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat 12 – 13
- Shaka Samvat N/A
- Kali Yuga 3058 – 3059
Holocene calendar 9957
Iranian calendar 665 BP – 664 BP
Islamic calendar 685 BH – 684 BH
Japanese calendar
Korean calendar 2290
Thai solar calendar 500
Year 44 BC was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Caesar and Antony (or, less frequently, year 710 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 44 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Events
By place
Rome
- Consuls: Gaius Julius Caesar, Mark Antony.
- February - Rome celebrates the festival of the Lupercal. Mark Antony presents Caesar with a royal diadem, urging him to take it and declare himself king. He refuses this offer and orders the crown to be placed in de Temple of Jupiter.
- March 15 (the Ides of March)—Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, is assassinated by a group of Roman senators, amongst them Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Caesar's Massilian naval commander, Decimus Brutus. Caesar's famous last quote—coined by William Shakespeare in his play Julius Caesar—was most likely not spoken (see: "Et tu, Brute?").
- March 20—Caesar's funeral is held. Marcus Antony gives a eulogy and in his Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears speech he makes accusations of murder and ensures a permanent breach with the conspirators against Caesar. He snatches Caesar's purple toga to show the crowd the stab wounds, the citizens tear apart the forum and cremate their Caesar on a makeshift pyre. Antony becomes the first man in Rome.
- Early April—Octavian returns from Apollonia in Dalmatia to Rome to take up Caesar's inheritance, against advice from Atia (his mother and Caesar's niece) and consular stepfather Antony.
- April 18 to April 21—Octavian engages in charm offensive with consular Cicero who is fulminating against Mark Antony.
- June—Antony is granted a five-year governorship of northern and central Transalpine Gaul (France) and Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy).
- September 2—Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.
- September 2—The first of Cicero's Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Antony is published. He will make 14 of them over the next several months.
- December—Antony besieges Brutus Albinus in Mutina (Modena), with Octavian, an ally of Decimus, who is one of his uncle's assassins, close by.
- A Denarius with a portrait of Julius Caesar is made. It is now kept at the American Numismatic Society in New York.
Europe
Births
- Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, Roman statesman and governor of Syria (d. 20 AD)
Deaths
- March 15—Julius Caesar assassinated in the Senate (b. 100 BC)
- July 26—Pharaoh Ptolemy XIV of Egypt (last date mentioned alive) (b. 60 BC/59 BC)
- Burebista, King of Dacia (ruled 82 BC–44 BC)
- Antipater the Idumaean, procurator of Judaea and father of Herod the Great