March 15, 2006

  • The things I don't know. 

    This morning it crossed my mind this, being the 15th, is "the ides of March."  Idly I wondered what the "ides" means, precisely.

    Still don't know, but did discover this heretofore unknown factoid: 
    In the ancient Roman calendar the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.

    Every month's got ides?  I didn't know that. 

Comments (7)

  • The Roman calendar is really weird.  They don't number the days like we do, but certain days in each month have a name, and then you count backwards from the next named day to the current date.  The first day of each month is always Kalends, but the 2nd of March is Ante diem sex Nones Martius, or something like that, and means, "Six days before Nones of March."  Nones is the seventh day of March, May, July, and October, but it's the fifth day of all the other months.   Go figure.

    Either they all had very sophisticated minds to be able to figure out which day it was, or else only the scholars knew which day of the month it was.  Maybe that's the real reason why Caesar went that day - he hadn't realized the Ides of March was already there!

  • Sorry about the tag.

  • Here's one ditty I found: "March 15. A prophet told Julius Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March." Julius Caesar was too arrogant to take this threat seriously. He was also too arrogant to respect the Senate properly, and a number of Senators were rather upset with him, to put it lightly. On March 15, BC 44, Caesar went to the Senate to make an announcement, but was assassinated by 60 Senators, lead by Brutus. Caesar died at the foot of the statue of Pompey the Great." Maybe it wasn't called specifically the Ides of March before this happened; maybe it just meant the days of each month as you mentioned above. However, when Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, it became written in history.

    Here is a very interesting explanation: "The soothsayer's warning to Julius Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March," has forever imbued that date with a sense of foreboding. But in Roman times the expression "Ides of March" did not necessarily evoke a dark mood—it was simply the standard way of saying "March 15." Surely such a fanciful expression must signify something more than merely another day of the year? Not so. Even in Shakespeare's time, sixteen centuries later, audiences attending his play Julius Caesar wouldn't have blinked twice upon hearing the date called the Ides.

    The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:

    * Kalends (1st day of the month)
    * Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
    * Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)

    The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be V Nones—5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days)."

  • Do we say "Jinx" when we post a comment at the same time??

  • Were it me, I'd say "jinx", that's for sure.

  • Here's a semi-related question for Kelly: you've commented before on the medieval practice of naming days not by the months we now use, but by their place on the church calendar. (I.e., "We'll come to you at Easter", or "I will plant my peas at Lady Day.") But do you know, how did they know WHEN some of those dates would be without a calendar to reference them to? I mean, most feasts are not moveable, but the Easter-related ones are. So how did the average person figure out when Easter was going to be so that if they had Easter-related plans, they knew what that meant?

  • Jane, I really don't know.  The Julian calendar was in use right down to the late 1500s in most of Europe and the mid 1700s in England and its colonies, and I would assume that the average person was aware of it.

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