expand: date=March 2009

Etymology

The term idūs (ides) originally referred to the day of the full moon. The Romans considered this an auspicious day in their calendar. The word ides comes from Latin, meaning "half division" (of a month) but is probably of non-Indo-European origin.

In print, film, television and theatre

• A paperback reprint of material from MAD Magazine, from the late 1950s, is titled The Ides of MAD.
• A 1970 Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch titled "Julius Caesar On an Aldis Lamp" had the seer sending the message "Beware the Ides of March" to Caesar using Morse code.
• An episode in the fourth season of Xena: Warrior Princess is titled "Ides of March", wherein Caesar is murdered.
• A social commentary play, written by Duncan Ley, was titled "The Ides of March" and premiered at The White Bear Theatre in London, UK, on 28 November 2008.
• Thornton Wilder's 1948 The Ides of March is an epistolary novel set in Rome at the time of Julius Caesar.
• In the Simpsons episode Homer the Great, Lisa warns Homer to "beware the Ides of March."

Observances

• The internet group Anonymous used the phrase "beware the Ides of March" when referring to its then-upcoming March 15, 2008 mass protest against the Church of Scientology.
• The Ides of March are celebrated every year by the Rome Hash House Harriers with a toga run in the streets of Rome, in the same place where Julius Caesar was killed.
• The Atlanta Chapter of the Dagorhir Battle Games Association hosts an annual spring event at Red Horse Stables on the weekend closest to the 15th of March. The event is appropriately named "The Ides of March".

References

External links

• William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene II
• Plutarch, The Parallel Lives, The Life of Julius Caesar
• Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Augustus (translated by Clayton M. Hall)