Beware the Ides of March!

No, not the idle of March (although you might beware March idleness, also known as spring fever). Nor are the eyes of March upon you. "Beware the Ides of March," a soothsayer warned Julius Caesar, or so Shakespeare tells us, and who among us dares to question Shakespeare? We probably shouldn't question his soothsayers either, as it turns out.

The Ides are not some furry little hooded creature from Star Wars, much as that may disappoint some. They are simply one of three times in a month used for dating by the Roman
calendar.

If you really want to know: the Romans marked time within the month from 3 dates: the Calends (yes, as in calendar), the Nones, and the Ides. The Calends were easy: the first of the month. The Nones fell on the 7th in March, May, July and October, and on the 5th at all other times. The Ides fell on the 15th in the four aforementioned months, and on the 13th in the others. To make things worse... alright, I won't tell you that they counted backwards from these dates. I knew you didn't want to know.

All that to say: the Ides of March means plain, simple March 15th, although it came to be something like the equivalent of a "9-11" for the Romans.

Caesar did not heed the soothsayer's warning (or at least not adequately), and was indeed killed in the Senate on the Ides of March, 44 b.c. This led to immediate civil wars in Rome, and some say was part of the reason for the fall of Rome. Since Caesar would have, so far as we can tell, probably managed to die at some point even if he hadn't been murdered, Rome seems to have been without hope.

Caesar's murderers were members of the Roman senate, and friends, "all honorable men" who feared that he was becoming too powerful, leaving behind the equality of the Roman republic. Consequently, they disposed of him. The most famous of these conspirators was Marcus Junius Brutus, who et tued. He was a distant cousin of Caesar's and a particular favorite with the dictator, named as one of his testamentary heirs.

It's not necessarily clear who were the good guys and who were the bad guys in the conflict. Like in other historical and current events, they didn't do us the favor of wearing white hats and black hats so we could set it down and be done with it.

Caesar, from all we can tell, was an ambitious man. He was an authoritative ruler, and even though he did refuse a crown and title of king, he didn't have any problem with being "dictator for life." Like most political leaders who are human, he probably was a mixture of good and bad elements.

Ditto (from the Latin, "dicto," "what was already spoken") for his murderers. Brutus especially in Shakespeare is from the first scene to the last an honorable, noble man-- but he also gave "the most unkindest cut of all" to the man who thought so highly of him and had pardoned him.
So it leaves unsettled the question of the assassins' justification. Were they right in taking the law into their own hands to dispose of a bloody tyrant? Was Brutus truly killing a man he loved because he loved Rome more?

Or were they themselves simply bloody murderers, imposing their own will just as tyrannically as they accused Caesar of doing? Was Brutus the most ungrateful of men? People through history have taken different sides, but we do know that Brutus did not become a heroic figure for the ages.

Whatever you may believe, The Ides and their disastrous results are a reminder to us to be very careful about trying to justify rebellion, and a lesson to all in authority not to abuse it. And we should all remember to beware of ambition, for "by that sin fell the angels."

We should also probably beware of men with lean and hungry looks who read too much, and friends with daggers in their smiles and hands. And if you see furry little hooded creatures running around, you might beware of them too.