What Are Ides and Why Should We Beware Them?

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Credit (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

People wearing Roman centurion costumes march in front of the Colosseum on the occasion of Ides of March, in Rome, Thursday, March 15, 2007.

There is a good chance that at some point today you will hear the phrase, "beware the Ides of March." Heck, you might even say it yourself. But why do we say it?

Well, it was on the Ides — March 15 — in 44 B.C. that Roman leader Julius Ceasar was stabbed to death at a Senate meeting (and you think that our current Congress is divisive). The warning that we still talk about today comes courtesy of William Shakespeare, who more than 1,600 years later, wrote it into his historically-based tragedy, Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2
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.

The implication here is that even before the Ides of March became infamous as the day Caesar was killed, it was already a thing. As it turns out, that is indeed the case.

The Roman calendar used back in 44 B.C. was based on earlier, lunar calendars. Full moons occurred near the middle of each month on what was known as "the Ides." On some months, like March, the Ides occurred right on the 15th. Here's more, from our friends at Merriam-Webster:

In spite of the plural form, in this sense it is usually used with a singular verb in English. The word is from Latin idus, and probably of Etruscan origin. It's interesting to note that the Romans never would have said the "15th of March." Months had three "nodal points": Kalends (the first day), Nones (the ninth day), and Ides. To refer to any day in the month other than these, a Roman would count backwards from the nearest nodal day our March 13th, for example, would be "three days before the Ides of March" (they included the nodal day in their backward count), and our March 16th was "17 days before the Calends of April" ("ante calendus Apriles"). Not until the Emperor Constantine issued an edict in 315 (was the system abolished in favor of using weeks with unnamed, though numbered, days.

While the Ides of each month had significance, the Ides of March were of particular importance. In the original Roman calendar, Martius (March) was the first month of the year so the Ides of March was the occasion of the first full moon. As such, there were a number of festivals over the years that would lead up to or take place on the Ides. During the Imperial period, the Ides kicked off a whole week of celebrations for the goddess Cybele and the god Attis. Before that, the Ides of March marked the feast of Anna Perenna, the old Roman goddess of "the ring of the year." What was that celebration like? Here's Roman poet Ovid's first hand account:

The crowd arrives, and scattered here and there over the green grass they drink, every lad reclining beside his lass…But they grow warm with sun and wine, and they pray for as many years as they take cups, and they count the cups they drink…There they also sing all the songs they learned in the theater, beating time to the words with their hands…they stagger home, a public spectacle: 'How happy you are!' cries the crowd as they meet them."

Sounds like a pretty good time. And so — in the original, festive spirit of the Ides of March — we finally come to the real reason why the Curiosity Desk decided to write about this today. It gave us an excuse to feature this: