Ides of March

"Beware the Ides of March"
--Julius Caesar, Act I, scene 2

Julius had other plans, of course, and ignored the warning -- leading to his assassination on the floor of the Senate. Death under the knives of 23 Senators -- a fate not unfamiliar to national leaders in our own time, even if nowadays the knifing is more metaphorical.

But, as every schoolboy knows, Caesar's demise occurred on the "Ides of March." What is this "Ides" business, you might (but didn't) ask? Every schoolboy knows the answer to that as well, but -- as a perusal of my recent essays suggests -- I've really been hard up for blog topics recently, and today the Ides of March seems to present an appropriately topical topic.

Now you -- and our hypothetical schoolboy (why never a schoolgirl?) -- may simply assume that the 15th of any month, for some mystic reason cherished by the ancients, was arbitrarily called the Ides. Just as we, in our day, have picked a mid-winter date for retail sales promotions and have called it, pulling a name out of a hat, "President's Day." But you -- and our schoolboy (school child?) -- wouldn't be quite correct.

Ides is our English corruption of the Latin word idus, a small but interesting word that may or may not be, ultimately, of Etruscan origin. ("Etruscans" = a clever, artistic and commercially proficient people who were flattened early on by their dour, brutish, but determined Roman neighbors, who (adding insult to injury) insisted on calling the Etruscans "Tyrrheni." A warning we should ponder, a warning against taking dour and brutish neighbors (I'm thinking of Canadians) for granted.) But I digress. (Or I excessively parenthesize.) The word Ides is probably derived from, or otherwise related etymologically to, the Latin word iduare, meaning "to divide."

The Ides thus was approximately the date that divided the month in half. For months with 31 days, like March, it occurred on the 15th. For other months, it occurred on the 13th. The original idea seemed to be that the Ides would mark the full moon of each month, but since Roman months were uniformly lengthier than the lunar month, I can't quite see how this would have worked.

The Romans had similar appellational inspirations for the 1st and 9th days of their months, calling them, respectively, the Kalends and the Nones. The Kalends, according to those who spend their lives thinking about such matters, probably was originally intended to mark the new moon of each month, and the Nones, the (waxing) half moon.

Once the Romans had thought up names for special moon days in the first half of the month, they seem to have lost interest. After the Ides of each month, a gray sea of dates known only by numbers stretched on placidly to the 31st (or 30th).

For those dates not lucky enough to have classy names like the Kalends or Nones or Ides, the Romans simply counted the days until the next named benchmark. Perhaps because the Arabs hadn't yet invented the zero, they called the benchmark itself the first day; therefore, for example, two days before the Ides (as we would call it) would be (to the Roman way of thinking) the third day before the Ides. Once past the Ides of each month, the Romans were stranded in a confusing realm where the month to which the formal date referred didn't correspond to the actual month as lived on the ground. E.g. ("exempli gratia", another curious Roman invention), March 20 would be the thirteenth day before the Kalends of April, or XIII Kal. Apr., even though the Romans were fully aware that they still had many days to suffer through yet another dreary March.

Today, March 14, would be the second day (yes, second, remember? Keep up!) before the Ides of March. II Id. Mart., one would think. But the day immediately prior to a benchmark date was instead called the Pridie (think about it, ok? -- pre + die, day before).

Therefore -- today is Prid. Id. Mart. (Mart., since they called March, Martius).

So, all I've been trying to get to, folks, is a simple greeting:

Happy Prid. Id. Mart.!!

And please, tomorrow, do beware the Ides of March.

(Which a generation or so ago was the deadline for filing federal income tax returns, which, while less painful than an assassination, still lent the expression a certain poignancy.)