“The ides of March are upon us.”
What exactly does that mean? Here’s some fun knowledge for you. It originally just meant the middle of the month. There are a lot of sources as to what else is celebrated or remembered on this day, but I want to just talk about the most famous of all of them. There’s a lot of history behind the saying, quite literally. Sources, such as Wikipedia, give us a glimpse as far back as 44 B.C.
“According to Plutarch, a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March; and on his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar met 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.”[2] This meeting is famously dramatised in William Shakespeare‘s play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.”[3][4]”
Later, in the Roman Senate, Caesar was assassinated by a large group of conspirators.
Today, in modern times, the saying is just to remind us to be careful because anything can happen.
Keeping this in mind, be careful as you go about your day. “The ides of March have come … but not gone.”
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