The Ides of March

The Ides of March. Whoo! Someone died! Let's celebrate it. Right?

WRONG. The Ides of March are more than a death day. Find out right here.

A famous date throughout pop culture, the Ides of March have existed for a lot longer than the most famous usage: of Caesar's assassination. Many remember the iconic Shakespeare line: “beware the ides of March,” spoken by the soothsayer to Caesar, and true, Shakespeare made the term popular. But what are the ides of March?

Firstly, the term ‘ides’ itself comes from the lunar calendar. The earliest Roman calendar, made by King Romulus, has March (called Martius in Rome) as the first month of the year. The months, instead of being divided into days, were divided by markers instead: Kalends (Kal) were the first days in a month, Nones (Non) were the 5th or 7th of a month depending on the month, and Ides (Id) were the 13th or 15th day in a month, once again depending on the month.

The reason the ides of March were so important back then was because they were the first full moon in any year. Thus, later in the Roman republic, people began to celebrate on the ides of March in the form of a New Year's festival, a mile from Rome on the shore of the Tiber River. There, normal frivolities occured, cheap wine, food, music, and sacrifices to the gods, especially to the deity Anna Perenna, for a happy and prosperous new year. This essentially was a direct ancestor to the modern practice of celebrating New Years.

Caesar ties in with this all almost perfectly. In 44 B.C. he was assassinated by being stabbed by fellow Roman senators, due to him being declared Dictator Perpetuus (Dictator Forever).

One thing to note is that just 2 years earlier, in 46 B.C. Julius Caesar changed the calendar after consulting Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer. He added ten days, bringing the total up to 355, and made the first day of the year January first. He was also the one who said there would be a leap year every four years.

But is Caesar’s assassination the only reason to fear the ides? Has anything else happened on that day? Surprisingly, the answer is yes.

A plethora of problems has plagued the date. (Woot! Language Arts finally came in use!)

In 1360, a French raiding party began a 48 hour spree of adulterous crimes and pillaging in Southern England. This was so serious that King Edward III stopped his own spree of raiding.

In 1889, a cyclone left over 200 people dead in Samoa. It destroyed six ships: three English and three German. This did have a flip side, however. It averted a possible war, as the ships were for a show of power.

In 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne. This ended a 304 year dynasty of czars.

In 1952, a world record rainfall collection was achieved, when 24 hour rainfall accumulated up to 73.62 inches over the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion.

A more somber fact is that in 1988, NASA announced that the ozone layer above the Northern Hemisphere was depleting three times as fast as previously predicted.

A slightly unrelated fact to the ides is that the kalends of a month are when bills are issued, just like Roman times.

Resources used in the production of this short history are

http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-are-the-ides-of-march

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/top-ten-reasons-to-beware-the-ides-of-march-8664107/

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/ides1.html