The New Murrey and Blue blog

My first acquaintance with the term the Ides of March was a school visit at the age of nine, when I was one of hundreds of schoolchildren watching it in an RAF hangar in West Germany. “Beware the Ides of March!” Well, I simply accepted the soundtrack and at that age certainly didn’t stop to wonder what, exactly, the Ides of March were.

Now I have come across this site which tells me that the apparently horrific Ides of March are 15 March. Along with Kalends and Nones, Ides are/were ancient markers used to pinpoint phases of the moon. So every month has these named phases, and the Ides are simply the first full moon of each one. 

It that all? I’m disappointed. I hoped for something truly shiversome to make my eyes widen and lips part in dread.

But it seems that the origin of the fearsome connotations of the date lie with Julius Caesar himself. He changed Rome’s New Year celebration from 15 March to January….and two years later, on the very Ides of March he’d abandoned, he was skewered by a number of “friendly” Roman Senate daggers. Oh dear.

And so the tradition has grown that nothing good happens on 15 March. Out of the twelve Ides of the year, only March is baleful. A little like any Friday the 13th!