The Ides of March

[sesley]

poor Julius Ceasar was assassinated this day. He wanted to include people from lands conquered by Rome and now a friend of Rome into the Senate but the old families that ruled Rome did not want that.So he did try to be more diverse for his time.

[aubrey]

The Ides of March was also the first Raffles story, where Raffles saves Bunny from disgrace and and, so doing, fills him with shame.

[everso]

Apparently, the "ides" (idus in Latin) marked the half-way point in the month.

eversoreliantongoogle

[jean]

Mar 15, 2011 13:40:23 GMT sesley said:

poor Julius Ceasar was assassinated this day. He wanted to include people from lands conquered by Rome and now a friend of Rome into the Senate but the old families that ruled Rome did not want that.So he did try to be more diverse for his time.

Looks like his PR machine got to you, sesley!

He was a nasty piece of work, and never did anything except with the purpose of strengthening his power base in his bid to become sole ruler.

The Romans had a rather odd way of identifying the days of the month. There were three fixed days - the Kalends (1st), the Nones (5th or 9th) and the Ides (13th or15th), and everything else was counted back from one of those until you hit the previous one.

The name Kalends at any rate persisted until the medieval period:

[everso]

Thanks Jean.

Sounds like a very peculiar way of marking off the calendar.

Kalends - Calendar?

[jean]

Yes!

I'd never really thought about why thr Romans counted days in that peculiar way, so I looked it up:

This system harks back to the earlier Roman calendar based on the moon. The start of the month would be announced by the priest who saw the first faint sliver of light in the New Moon's black disc. He would call out - calare in Latin - and that is the origin of the Latin word for the first of the month, the Kalendae or the Kalends. The next phase of the moon, the first quarter when it is exactly half a disc, were called the Nonae (usually Nones today) and the full moon was known as the Ides. The waning half was not marked. But even by the seventh century BC these divisions were formalised. The Kalendae were always the first day of the month. The Ides were fixed as the fifteenth day of a 31-day month or the thirteenth day of any other. The period leading up to the Ides was fixed as eight days and so the Nonae had to be on either the fifth day of a short month or the seventh day of a long month.