(I accidentally posted this in “Comment on C’s comments”. Oops!)
Everyone had heard that phrase, “Beware the Ides of March” but my question is, Why? And what the heck is an “Ide”?
I’ve heard that some think it’s “Beware the Eyes of March” and it refers to the “eyes” of young men and that women should be wary of them so they don’t get pregnant. Who knows…
Anyone have a clue?
Uncle C.?
There’s no such thing as an “ide.” Ides is the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months according to the Julian calendar. The ides of March was the day that Julius Caesar was assisnated, IIRC.
From http://www.m-w.com :
The ides of March is when Julius Caesar was assassinated.
Anyone who says “eyes of March” should be smacked upside the head.
Well, happy Ides of October, everyone!
The “Ides of March” meant the middle of March, and was a major religious ceremony for pre-Christian Romans. On this day, the Pontifex Maximus (something akin to “The Pope” for Jupiter-worshipping Romans) would conduct ceremonies and foretell the future through divination.
As the legend goes, on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., Pontifex Maximus and Dictator-For-Life Gaius Julius Caesar was on his way to the ceremony when a soothsayer shouted at him “Beware the Ides of March!” Caesar, however, was a notorious skeptic*, and refused to believe in the words of soothsayers or that the exceedingly bad portents that came at the Ides of March celebration had anything to do with him. He then merrily went to the Senate to address them upon a land reform issue, whereupon he was stabbed to death by Senators who feared that Caesar was actually planning to make himself King.
*So why was a notorious skeptic Pontifex Maxmius? Politics. It was a very presitigous and important position (imagine being able to influence votes and decisions based on how you interpret old scrolls and sheep’s bladders- “Yes, yes, the gods are telling us that I need a raise…”), and Caesar, as the scion of an old and powerful family, had been given the position as a young man.
He was already Emperor; doesn’t that outrank King?
Also, isn’t “Ceasar” the root for the modern words king, queen, czar, etc.?
The story of the soothsayer is set forth in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, and in that play, you will find the “Beware the ides of March!” line.
IIRC, at one point before the ides, Caesar encounters the old woman, who tells him to “Beware the ides of March!”
On the ides of March, he encounters her again, and tries to have some fun with her:
JC: “The ides of March are come, old woman”
Old Woman: “Aye, come, but not yet gone”
Or something like that. (From memory, so the wording may be a little off.
And then Caesar goes to the Senate to meet his fate.
Don’t know if I have this correct, but I seem to recall that it was Cassandra who foretold of the bad things afoot on the Ides of March, but due to a curse, was not believed. Now, anyone who predict misfortune for a venture is said to be a Cassandra.
Caesar was neither king nor emperor. The Romans had an extremely distasteful attitude towards kingship. Caesar was dictator perpetuus, or lifetime dictator. The office of dictator was elected, and lasted six months in times of extreme republican need. Caesar just got himself appointed to a lifetime version of this position.
Caesar is in fact the root of several modern words of authority, and was even an official sub-emperor after the time of Diocletian.
MR
Ah, here we go (Act I, Scene II):
Then in Act III, scene I:
So it turns out the soothsayer was a man. My error.
Also, John Corrado, you refer to a ‘legend’ of the soothsayer. I always just figured Shakespeare invented the soothsayer as a dramatic device. Was there an earlier account of this soothsayer upon which Shakespeare’s scenes were based? Or were you perhaps thinking of the play?
(I’m not trying to be smart; I’m just wondering if there is another source for the story.)
The Ides were just one part of the old Roman lunar calendar, originally being the first date the full moon was observed. There was also the Nones and Kalends, which were the first observation of the first-quarter moon and the thin cresent of the waxing moon, respectively.
Think that’s confusing? Check out how the Romans handled it all here.
A more modern/urban interpretation:
“Don’t drink St. Ides while marching…you may fall over.”
Plnnr - Cassandra figures in the Fall of Troy, some 1500 years or so before GJC was born. She slept with Apollo and was given the gift of prophecy, then PO’d him, so he cursed her so that, despite speaking the truth, she would never be believed. She knew her home town of Troy would fall to the Greeks and she would be enslaved by the Greek commander and murdered along with him by his wife, but could never convince anyone else to do anything about it. No Ides here.
Thank you, Olentzero, for mentioning the basics of the Roman calendar system. It saves me the trouble. 
Absolutely. In general, the more you read Shakespeare, the more you will realize how little original plot he made up. I do not mean to disparrage him in any way, mind you.
At any rate, the definitive, though not entirely reliable, version of Caesar’s death is found in Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars. Suetonius was writing imperial biography, not history, so even by the standards of his time he was considered more of a gossip-monger than a serious historian. Furthermore, he was writing from the court of the Emperor Hadrian, considerably later than the era of Julius Caesar. Nevertheless, his story of the assassination, which includes both a soothsayer and a dream of Calpurnia, his wife, appears to be accurate enough for modern purposes.
MR
I stand corrected (just like the old woman in her orthopedic shoes).
The Romans didn’t number the days sequentially from 1. Instead they
had three fixed points in each month:
“Kalendae” (or “Calendae”), which was the first day of the month.
“Idus”, which was the 13th day of January, February, April,
June, August, September, November, and December, or
the 15th day of March, May, July, or October.
“Nonae”, which was the 9th day before Idus (counting Idus
itself as the 1st day).
Lifted from:
For a good document explaining different calendars check out http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html
From that document:
The Romans didn’t number the days sequentially from 1. Instead they
had three fixed points in each month:
“Kalendae” (or “Calendae”), which was the first day of the month.
“Idus”, which was the 13th day of January, February, April,
June, August, September, November, and December, or
the 15th day of March, May, July, or October.
“Nonae”, which was the 9th day before Idus (counting Idus
itself as the 1st day).
The days between Kalendae and Nonae were called “the 5th day before
Nonae”, “the 4th day before Nonae”, “the 3rd day before Nonae”, and
“the day before Nonae”. (There was no “2nd day before Nonae”. This was
because of the inclusive way of counting used by the Romans: To them,
Nonae itself was the first day, and thus “the 2nd day before” and “the
day before” would mean the same thing.)
Similarly, the days between Nonae and Idus were called “the Xth day
before Idus”, and the days after Idus were called “the Xth day before
Kalendae (of the next month)”.
Julius Caesar decreed that in leap years the “6th day before Kalendae
of March” should be doubled. So in contrast to our present system, in
which we introduce an extra date (29 February), the Romans had the
same date twice in leap years. The doubling of the 6th day before
Kalendae of March is the origin of the word “bissextile”. If we
create a list of equivalences between the Roman days and our current
days of February in a leap year, we get the following:
7th day before Kalendae of March 23 February
6th day before Kalendae of March 24 February
6th day before Kalendae of March 25 February
5th day before Kalendae of March 26 February
4th day before Kalendae of March 27 February
3rd day before Kalendae of March 28 February
the day before Kalendae of March 29 February
Kalendae of March 1 March
You can see that the extra 6th day (going backwards) falls on what is
today 24 February. For this reason 24 February is still today
considered the “extra day” in leap years (see section 2.3). However,
at certain times in history the second 6th day (25 Feb) has been
considered the leap day.
Why did Caesar choose to double the 6th day before Kalendae of March?
It appears that the leap month Intercalaris/Mercedonius of the
pre-reform calendar was not placed after February, but inside it,
namely between the 7th and 6th day before Kalendae of March. It was
therefore natural to have the leap day in the same position.
In high school I had a friend who was just a little bit…er, odd. While I didn’t witness this personally, I have no reason to doubt the story.
In my friend’s 10th grade English class, they were reading “Julius Caesar” aloud, with students taking various parts.
The role of the soothsayer fell to my friend, who when his big moment came declared
“Beware the ideas of March.”
A bit later, his luck improved, and he actually landed the role of Caesar at the moment of his climactic scene. My friend rendered it this way:
"Ett too, Broot?
Then fall Caesar…dies."