DeadSplinter Up! All Night: Beware the Ides of March

Et tu, Brute?

On this date in 44 BC – Julius Caesar was stabbed in the back by sixty of his coworkers in the Roman Senate. Quite a few years later, good old Billy Shakespeare coined the term “Beware the Ides of March” in his epic play about the assassination. What are the actual Ides that are referred to? From Wikipedia –

The Romans did not number each day of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (the 5th or 7th, nine days inclusive before the Ides), the Ides (the 13th for most months, but the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (1st of the following month). Originally the Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. In the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.[3]

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18 Comments

  1. Julius Caesar’s supposed lover, Cleopatra, by the Lumineers —

     

    I’ve long doubted this story — I’m in tune with the people who say it was propaganda to put Julius Caesar’s story in sync with Dido and Aeneas. But the pictures of them on a barge on the Nile are fun, to be sure.

  2. If you have Amazon Prime I highly suggest you watch 1966’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Like its contemporary, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” it’s a farce with an all-star cast comedic cast. Stephen Sondheim did the songs (this is where “Comedy Tonight” comes from); Larry Gelbert was the book’s co-writer; it was Buster Keaton’s final appearance on film.

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