Rejected by Vorenus and Eirene and racked by guilt for the killing of Eirene's fiancé out of a jealous rage, Pullo has sunk to working as an assassin for the gangster Erastes. When Pullo gets arrested for killing one of Caesar's popular opponents, he condemns himself by refusing to name who hired him, despite Octavian's attempts to defend him.
Meanwhile, Vorenus finds his new official duties as magistrate tedious, especially when he gets caught between Caesar and the demands made by veterans' spokesman Mascias.

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.

It is 1918 and the end of WWI. Millions have died, and the world is exhausted by war. But soon a new horror is sweeping the world, a terrifying virus that will kill more than fifty million people - the Spanish flu. Using dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness testimony from doctors, soldiers, civilians and politicians, this one-off special brings to life the onslaught of the disease, the horrors of those who lived through it and the efforts of the pioneering scientists desperately looking for the cure.
Narrated by Christopher Eccleston, the film also asks whether, a century later, the lessons learnt in 1918 might help us fight a future global flu pandemic.

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.

As they prepare their counterattack against Caesar, Pompey's Republicans begin to squabble over both the anticipated spoils and the method of finishing Caesar off. Badly outnumbered, Caesar and Antony make their stand at Pharsalus. As they try to reach Caesar in Greece, the shipwrecked Vorenus and Pullo confront an unexpected dilemma.
Back in Rome, Atia again sends Octavia to beg protection from Servilia, who complies readily to encourage her growing friendship with Octavia. Niobe's sister Lyde comes back to see her and comforts her over Vorenus's disappearance.