Beware the Ides of March.
What are the Ides of March?
The Ides of March are the 15th of March,
the middle day of the month of March,
of the Roman month of March.
If you've heard of the Ides of March,
you've probably heard, "Beware the Ides of March."
Beware the Ides of March.
And that's because in 44 BC,
Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March.
It seems to be the case that there's some premonition
that this was going to happen.
Shakespeare preserves this,
but it's in the ancient accounts too,
that a soothsayer had told him, "Beware the Ides of March."
Beware the Ides of March!
(crowd chattering overlaps)
Beware the Ides of March.
And as Caesar was walking to the Senate
on the morning of that fateful day,
he passed Spurinna, the soothsayer, in the street
and he said, "Hey, the Ides of March have come."
(laughs) You know, "What's the problem?"
And Spurinna said, "Aye, Caesar, but they have not gone."
That was a true prophecy as it turned out
because Caesar did go to the Senate and as was planned,
one of the conspirators pulled him aside to ask a favor.
He pulled down Caesar's toga.
Take your hand off me.
Which was the signal
and then Caesar was surrounded by a crowd of conspirators
who had concealed their daggers in their pen boxes.
Because, of course,
you were not supposed to be armed in the Senate.
And they drew their daggers and Casca,
was apparently the first to stab,
but the accounts differ.
Caesar may have had 35 or 36 wounds, or maybe 23.
23 has been a canonical number.
There are all kind of really interesting parallels
with other points in history.
(man shouts)
And particularly that,
how incredibly shocking it was
to have this act of raw political violence
right there in a meeting of the Senate.
The reaction, in fact, was of total shock and dismay
and maybe as many as 60 senators were in on this.
The assassination of Caesar
ushers in a very confusion period of Roman history.
You have 14 more years of upheaval and chaos.
It's only when Caesar's heir, Octavian,
finally defeats Antony and Cleopatra in the year 30
that things are set back on a firm footing.
But not on a republican or democratic footing,
but on an autocracy that kind of masqueraded
under the guise of a restored republic.
Politics aside,
it turns out Caesar had a lot to do
with how we mark and think of time today.
The Roman calendar originally was a 355 day calendar.
It was originally probably a lunar calendar,
where the months were measured by the phases of the Moon,
but the 355 day calendar doesn't really work
because the solar year is 365 1/4 days long.
So the Romans had divided the year into 12 months,
but they were falling short, so they kept falling behind.
Two years before his death,
Caesar fixed the calendar.
When Caesar brought the calendar into true,
when he lined up the civic calendar with the solar calendar,
the year as the Romans observed it civically
had gotten so far out of whack,
it was like three months different.
So in the year 46, as dictator,
Caesar, he intercalated a month after February
and then he intercalated two more months
between November and December
which ended up making the year 46 a 445 day year.
Which I think must have been so agonizing. (laughs)
Anyone who's lived through 2020
may be able to relate to a year
that feels like it's 445 days long.
Caesar's most lasting accomplishment
is that he did reform the calendar
and we use Caesar's calendar today.
Regardless of whether he was a political hero
or whether he was a tyrant who had to be deposed
by any means necessary, we still live on Caesar's time.
This is Inside Edition Digital.
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