[MR] Wikipedia: Ides of March, or Any Other Month

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today is the Ides of March, made famous for the 44 BCE date Julius
Caesar got himself stabbed in the back, as well as a few other places.
Shakespeare immortalized the famous line, "Beware the Ides of March", a
warning the real Caesar and countless imitators on stage since failed to
heed. Today Shakespeare is our main cultural connection to this date.

The ides were more than just gory renaissance-era theatrical tropes. Every
month in the very confusing Roman calendar featured an ides on the
mid-month day, or near the middle in a month (the 13th seems to have been
popular). The ides were when debts were to be settled and rents coughed up
to the landlord or his factor. The day was also considered to be holy, and
various deities in the Roman pantheon were honored with sacrifices and
rituals.

The ides fell out of use when a Christianized Rome banished the pagan
deities to lush and sometimes rather randy renaissance sculptures and
paintings, and to the pages of mythology books by Bullfinch or Hamilton
that many of us read in junior high. Ides suffered their final *coup de
grace* when the more sensible Gregorian calendar was adopted and they no
longer had any meaning.

You can read more about ides at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March
.

Yours Aye,


Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆
Continuing a crusade to keep the original Merry Rose relevant and in
business.