The price of Caesar's mercy: Cicero nominates Caesar to an unprecedented ten-year dictatorship and Brutus speaks in support of the motion. With martial authority and Niobe at his side, Vorenus campaigns for magistrate under Posca's advice, but is shocked to learn from Posca that Caesar has already fixed the election in Vorenus's favor.
Meanwhile, Atia continues her humiliation of Servilia while denying any involvement in her assault.

The defeated Cato and Scipio fall back on the African city of Utica after the Battle of Thapsus where they decide to end it all. Caesar, after two years of fighting in Greece and Egypt, returns to Rome and receives a hero's welcome.
Meanwhile, Servilia's cold rage against the Julii clan makes Brutus's submission to Caesar even more painful. Octavian returns home from military school and Caesar, impressed with his nephew's incisive political acumen, appoints him a pontiff despite his youth.

In Egypt, Caesar rebukes the advisers of the boy king, Ptolemy XIII, for their presumption in eliminating Pompey and demands the man who killed him. Caesar decides to intervene in the dispute between Ptolemy and his sister-wife, Cleopatra, to ensure both Rome's grain supply and his own access to Egypt's treasure.
Antony, in an unusual show of prudence, advises against this with only half a legion in Alexandria and Cato and Scipio still at large in Africa. In Rome, Brutus gets a chilly reception from Servilia when he returns home from Greece.