BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Beware! March 15 is right around the bend, and with it the infamous Ides of March. We all have heard the phrase “Beware the Ides of March,” but is the date really that threatening?
“Historically, the Ides of March was a day to settle accounts, a day when bills were due,” said Jason Moralee, assistant professor of history at Illinois Wesleyan University, who noted we usually associate the day with a settling of another kind of account – the assassination of Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.
According to Moralee, whose focus is ancient Rome, Caesar was the last in a line of generals who ruled the late Roman republic. “These men had used their glorious victories to carve out political power, and many thought Caesar went too far.” After squelching a civil war, Caesar had been declared Dictator Perpetuus, or perpetual dictator, and renamed monuments in honor of himself, said Moralee. “This was just too much, and those who conspired against him took up the motto libertas! or liberty.”
The fact that the assassination took place on the 15th of March could have been a symbolic “settling” of Caesar’s acts of tyranny, or it could have simply been a matter of timing. Caesar was planning on leaving for a military campaign shortly after the Ides. Moralee thinks both explanations are right – the day had symbolic and practical significance. “I always like the really practical explanations. Even historical figures generally thought in practical ways,” he said.