Death of Benito Mussolini Milan, where he had been based, and tried to escape to the Swiss border. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Mussolini and Petacci were shot the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. The bodies were beaten,
Dictator perpetuo the next ten years. At some point between January and February 44 BCE he was appointed "dictator perpetuo", but was assassinated less than two months later (on the Ides of March). "Dictator perpetuo" is often mistranslated as "dictator for life", but the title did not imply that Caesar would never resign it. Weinstock has argued that the perpetual dictatorship was part of the senatorial decrees regarding Caesar's divine honors, as well as his planned apotheosis as "Divus Iulius", a complex of honors aimed at eternity and divinity. Dictator perpetuo Dictator perpetuo (English: "dictator in perpetuity"), also called dictator in perpetuum,