Beware the Ides of March!

Sometimes you hear people say: “Beware the Ides of March!” as a warning for impending doom. But where did that phrase come from?

The Ides were references points in the Roman calendar. It meant that it was the 15th day of the month March, May, July, or October. In the remaining months the Ides fell on the 13th. The Ides were used to calculate the unnamed days of the year. So if you’d ask a Roman citizen tomorrow’s date, she or he would say: “It’s the day after the Ides of March!”

Of course this does not explain why we still refer to the Ides today. In William’s Shakespeare’s famous play, a fortuneteller tells Julius Caesar: “Beware the Ides of March!”. The man’s warning is foolishly ignored, and Caesar is stabbed on 15th of March, 44 BC, by his best friend Brutus and the conspirators in the Senate.

While the Romans used to celebrate the god of war Mars today, thanks to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, the phrase is now a metaphor for betrayal and falling victim to one’s fate.

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