If you are a Literature student, and a student of Shakespeare, you must have read the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March”.
What exactly is the Ides of March?
In the earliest Roman calendar which consisted of ten months beginning with Martius (March), dates were expressed in relation to the phases of the moon during each month.
The first phase of the moon – the new moon – was denoted by Kalends and signified the first day of the month; the first quarter moon fell on either the fifth or seventh day of the month and was referred to as Nones; the full moon fell on either the 13th or 15th day of the month and was referred to as Ides.
The Ides of March—March 15—came to mark the first full moon of a new year (March was the first month of the year until it was replaced by January about 450 BC).
Read More: What Has January Got in Common with Two-Faced Janus?
The word Ides derives from a Latin word which means to divide. Also, the Ides of each month was sacred to Jupiter, known to the Greeks as Zeus. The Flamen Dialis or Jupiter’s high priest, led the Ides Sheep in procession along the Via Sacra to the place where it was sacrificed.
In addition, the Ides of March was also the occasion of the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (annus in Latin) whose festival originally concluded the ceremonies of the new year. The day was happily celebrated among the common people with picnics, drinking, and wild parties.
But Why Be Wary of the Ides of March?
This tradition comes from the quote mentioned earlier in William Shakespeare play “Julius Caesar”, because this day is associated with tragedy – the assassination of the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar.
The story goes thus:
Shortly after Julius Caesar instituted the Julian Calendar in 46 BC, he was granted the title Dictator Perpetuus or Dictator for Life. But Caesar’s increasing power gave the Roman Senate much concern, and fearful that they might be overthrown and absolute control of the Roman Empire granted to Caesar.
In the account of Plutarch, it is said that a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. That on his way to the Theatre of Pompey where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, “The ides of March have come”, meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.”
His doctors had also advised him not to go for medical reasons; and as much by his wife, Calpurnia, who did not want him to go because of the troubling dreams that she had.
Yet, it was on the very steps leading to the Theatre of Pompey, where the Senate was meeting that a group of Roman senators – as many as 60, led by Brutus and Cassius – were said to have stabbed Julius Caesar 23 times until he died on March 15, 44 B.C., forever linking the day, and the seer’s warning “to beware the Ides of March” with this infamous tragedy.
And there goes the story of the Ides of March.
