Ides of March

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File:Vincenzo Camuccini - La morte di Cesare.jpg

The Death of Julius Caesar (1806) by Vincenzo Camuccini

Template:Julius Caesar series The Ides of March (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx, Medieval Latin: {{#invoke:Lang|lang}})<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> is the day on the Roman calendar marked as the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, roughly the midpoint of a month, of Martius, corresponding to 15 March on the Gregorian calendar. It was marked by several major religious observances. In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar, which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.

IdesEdit

The Romans did not number each day of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (the 5th or 7th, eight days before the Ides), the Ides (the 13th for most months, but the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (1st of the following month).

Originally the Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. Martius (March) was the first month of the Roman year until as late as the mid-second century BC, an order reflected in the numerical names of the months of September (the seventh month) through December (the tenth month) not corresponding to their current position on the Gregorian calendar. In the earliest Roman calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> As a fixed point in the month, the Ides accumulated functions set to occur every month, and was the day when debt payments and rents were due.<ref>Sarit Kattan Gribetz, "A Matter of Time: Writing Jewish Memory into Roman History," AJS Review 40:1 (2016), p. 58, n. 4.</ref><ref>Agnes Kirsopp Michels, The Calendar of the Roman Republic (Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 78.</ref>

Religious observancesEdit

File:Sousse mosaic calendar March.JPG

Panel thought to depict the Mamuralia, from a mosaic of the months in which March is positioned at the beginning of the year (first half of the third century AD, from El Djem, Tunisia, in Roman Africa)

The month of Martius was named for the god Mars, whose "birthday" was celebrated on the first, but the Ides of each month were sacred to Jupiter, the Romans' supreme deity. The Flamen Dialis, Jupiter's high priest, led the "Ides sheep" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) in procession along the Via Sacra to the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, where it was sacrificed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

March retained many of its new-year ceremonies even when it was preceded on the calendar by January and February. In addition to the monthly sacrifice, the Ides of March was also the occasion of the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (Latin {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) whose festival originally concluded the ceremonies of the new year. The day was enthusiastically celebrated among the common people with picnics, drinking, and revelry.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> One source from late antiquity also places the Mamuralia on the Ides of March.<ref>Template:Cite book Other sources place it on 14 March.</ref> This observance, which has aspects of scapegoat or ancient Greek [[pharmakos|Template:Transliteration]] ritual, involved beating an old man dressed in animal skins and perhaps driving him from the city. The ritual may have been a new-year festival representing the expulsion of the old year.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In the later Imperial period, the Ides began a "holy week" of festivals celebrating Cybele and Attis,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref> Template:Cite book</ref> being the day {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("The Reed enters"), when Attis was born and found among the reeds of a Phrygian river.<ref>Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of Religious History (Routledge, 2012), p. 88; Lancellotti, Attis, Between Myth and History, p. 81.</ref> He was discovered by shepherds or the goddess Cybele, who was also known as the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Great Mother") (narratives differ).<ref>Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1990), p. 166.</ref> A week later, on 22 March, the solemn commemoration of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("The Tree enters") commemorated the death of Attis under a pine tree. A college of priests, the Template:Transliteration ("tree bearers") annually cut down a tree,<ref>Jaime Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras, translated by Richard Gordon (Brill, 2008), pp. 288–289.</ref> hung from it an image of Attis,<ref>Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 27.1; Rabun Taylor, "Roman Oscilla: An Assessment", RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 48 (Autumn 2005), p. 97.</ref> and carried it to the temple of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius (Template:Abbr 54 AD).<ref>Lydus, De Mensibus 4.59; Suetonius, Otho 8.3; Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 88.</ref> A three-day period of mourning followed,<ref>Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 88.</ref> culminating with celebrating the rebirth of Attis on 25 March, the date of the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar.<ref>Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.21.10; Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion, p. 88; Salzman, On Roman Time, p. 168.</ref>

Assassination of CaesarEdit

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File:Eid Mar.jpg

lang}} – "on the Ides of March") under a "cap of freedom" between two daggers

In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch,<ref name=plutarch>Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Caesar 63</ref> a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "Well, the Ides of March are come", implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied, "Aye, they are come, but they are not gone."<ref name=plutarch/> 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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Roman biographer Suetonius<ref>Suetonius, Divus Julius 81.</ref> identifies the "seer" as a haruspex named Spurinna.

Caesar's assassination opened the final chapter in the crisis of the Roman Republic. After his victory in Caesar's civil war, his death triggered a series of further Roman civil wars that would finally result in the rise to sole power of his adopted heir Octavian. In 27 BC, Octavian became emperor Augustus, and thus he finally terminated the Roman Republic.<ref>"Forum in Rome," Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 215.</ref> Writing under Augustus, Ovid portrays the murder as a sacrilege, since Caesar was also the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} of Rome and a priest of Vesta.<ref>Ovid, Fasti 3.697–710; A.M. Keith, entry on "Ovid," Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 128; Geraldine Herbert-Brown, Ovid and the Fasti: An Historical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 70.</ref> On the fourth anniversary of Caesar's death in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, Octavian executed 300 senators and equites who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius, the brother of Mark Antony.<ref>Melissa Barden Dowling, Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World (University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 50–51; Arthur Keaveney, The Army in the Roman Revolution (Routledge, 2007), p. 15.</ref> The executions were one of a series of actions taken by Octavian to avenge Caesar's death. Suetonius and the historian Cassius Dio characterised the slaughter as a religious sacrifice,<ref>Suetonius, Life of Augustus 15. Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>Cassius Dio 48.14.2. Template:Webarchive</ref> noting that it occurred on the Ides of March at the new altar to the deified Julius.

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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