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But as his power increased, so his enemies multiplied. His subsequent triumphant 8 year campaign to conquer and subjugate Gaul and his audacious invasion of Britain cemented his position at the apex of public life. By this time Caesar was already a highly polarising figure in Rome, racking up enormous debts in his implacable quest for power.Ĭaesar’s election as consul in 59 BC led to further enrichment, helped along by a secret pact with the military general Pompey and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus - the first triumvirate. 62 BC finds him elected praetor, and the governorship of further Spain soon followed. In 69 BC he was elected Quaestor, and 6 years later somehow managed to get himself made the Pontifex Maximus, or High Priest. Military commissions and increasingly prestigious political offices soon followed. After securing his release by raising the ransom himself (which he insisted be set higher than the initial asking price of the gobsmacked pirates), Caesar, who held no military or public office, procured ships and a navy, pursued his ex-captors, captured them, and had them crucified en-mass. Giving a foretaste of his indomitable spirit and sheer bloody mindedness, Caesar was captured by pirates on a study trip to Rhodes when in his early 20s. Even if your knowledge of ancient Rome barely extends beyond Russell Crowe’s gladiator bellowing “Are you not entertained!?” into the Colosseum’s yawning bleachers, it’s a fairly sure bet that you’ve heard of our Julius.īorn into the aristocratic Julii family in (probably) 100 BC, Caesar’s rise to power and influence was nothing short of astonishing.

Portait of Julius Caesar from the Naples Archaeological Museumīut the Ides of March will be forever be associated with Julius Caesar. The Ides of March also marked the feast of Ana Perenna, the culminating event of ancient Roman celebrations of the New Year which originally was celebrated at the beginning of March. The ides of every month were sacred to the god Jupiter, and a procession of sacrificial sheep made its way through Rome to the Citadel to celebrate the occasion. In March the nones fell on the 7th, so days 2-6 were referred to as ‘before the Nones.’ Days 8-14 were ‘before the ides’ which fell on March 15th, and the remaining days were described as ‘before the kalends’ of the following month.ĭespite being just another way of saying March 15th, the ides did have some symbolic and cultural resonance in antiquity.

To track the passage of the days, days were counted back from the nearest reference point.

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Rome’s ancient calendar was a lunar one, and the 3 reference points related to the cycle of the moon - the ides marked the first full moon of the month.

The ides, in fact, merely refer to the somewhat complicated way the passage of the weeks and days were calculated in ancient Rome.Įach month possessed three fixed reference points: the kalends on the first day, the ides in the middle of the month, and the nones midway between the two. In his dramatic rendering of Caesar’s assassination and the ensuing civil war, a soothsayer utters his immortal warning to the dictator as he makes his way through an adoring throng.Ĭaesar unwisely dismisses the intervention as the ramblings of a ‘dreamer’, but one can hardly have expected him to take the soothsayer’s forecast to heart: despite their portentous overtones to our 21st-century ears, there is nothing intrinsically inauspicious about the ides of March. The Menologium Rusticum Colotianum, an ancient Roman calendarĪs with so many iconic phrases that have become common cultural capital across the globe, the portentous warning ‘Beware the Ides of March’ is an invention of William Shakespeare. To celebrate the launch of our Julius Caesar Virtual Tour, where we follow in the footsteps of the dictator, this week our blog is looking in detail at the Ides of March and the events that led to his assassination. But what exactly are the Ides of March, and how did events unfold on that fateful day in 44 BC? Civil war ensued, and from its ashes rose the first Emperor of the vast Roman state: Gaius Octavius, known to history as Augustus. Ironically the assassination of Caesar accelerated rather than halted the collapse of Republican Rome. The all-powerful Julius Caesar, just declared dictator for life and seemingly on the fast track to absolute sovereign power, was cut down in the Theatre of Pompey by a group of 60 senators unwilling to stand by as the Roman Republic descended into autocratic rule. Beware the Ides of March …On March 15th, 44 BC the course of Roman (and perhaps world) history changed forever.

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