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,
Roman dictator of corruption. The dictator's lieutenant was the magister equitum, or "master of the horse". He would be nominated by the dictator immediately upon his own appointment, and unless the "senatus consultum" specified the name of the person to be appointed, the dictator was free to choose whomever he wished. It was customary for the dictator to nominate a magister equitum even if he were appointed for a non-military reason. Before the time of Caesar, the only dictator who refused to nominate a magister equitum was Marcus Fabius Buteo in 216 BC, and he strenuously objected to his own nomination, because