| The Ides of March 15 March 2008 < -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> |
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Act 1 Scene 2 Julius Ceasar - William Shakespeare 1599 SOOTHSAYER: Caesar! CAESAR: Ha! who calls? CASCA: Bid every noise be still: peace yet again! CAESAR: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear. SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March. CAESAR: What man is that? BRUTUS: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March. CAESAR: Set him before me; let me see his face. CASSIUS: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar. CAESAR: What say'st thou to me now? speak once again. SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March. CAESAR: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass. < -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> So what is the significance of the Ides of March? Well to the Roman's probably not much more than the fact that the Ides was the one day a month consider sacred to Jupiter. For us the idea of the Ides of March has passed into common parlencedue to the influence of one William Shakespeare, playwright extraordinaire, and his portrayal of the politcal assasination of Julius Ceasar on the Ides of March 44BC. The Roman calendar is notoriusly complicated, containing 45 public holidays, and the idea of monthly Ides, Kalendes and Nones. It does however provide the basis for our 365 days a year, with 366 days in a leap year. Unlike the present system not all days were given their own name or reference number. Each month in the calender was arranged around the three named days, and it was from these that the other (un-named) days took their references. To make matters even more complicated the named days could occur at different times depending on what time of year it was. The three named days are as follows: Kalends - 1st of the month. Nones - 5th or 7th of the month. Ides 13th or 15th month. The named days fell later during the months of March, May, July and October, and earlier for the rest of the year. Confused yet? Suffice it to say that the Ides of March is the 15th of the month. David Ewing Duncan, author of The Calendar, has suggested that the though the Roman Calendar is considered pretty obscure today, the system was well known up until the Rennaisance some 2,000 years after the Roman period. For this reason Shakespeare could use the phrase the Ides of March without any cause for concern. So all in all what ill tiding does the Ides of March predict? Nothing really, it's just that you can't keep a good story (or conspiracy theory) down. [READ MORE] National Geographic Article about the assasination of Julius Ceasar. [CULTURE] [HOME] |
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