Question of the Day - 15 March 2019

You're right. Over the years, we've published a lot of Questions of the Day about particular dates (and April Fools Day is coming up once again), but never one about the Ides of March.  

So here you go.

The “ides” aren’t only about March. Since Roman times, they’ve signified the middle of all months. But in those days, the ides were particularly significant during the months of March, May, July, and October; on those days, debts were scheduled to be settled. (It's perhaps not a coincidence that the ides of April are Tax Day.) For the rest of the months, the 13th was the applicable debt-settling date. Long before William Shakespeare wrote the famous line, “Beware the ides of March,” in his play Julius Caesar, the ides and the 13th were considered inauspicious for that reason.

In the play, a soothsayer speaks the “Beware” line twice, warning Caesar of his impending assassination. The second time, Caesar sees the soothsayer and happens to remark that nothing bad has happened yet, to which the soothsayer replies, ominously, that the day hasn’t ended yet.

So the Ides of March were certainly unlucky for poor Julie C. and since then, the day has carried the stigma of being unlucky, even if your last name isn’t Caesar.

In addition, some major historical events have occurred on March 15, perhaps planned in advance to make a statement. In 1917, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on that day; in 1939, Hitler invaded Prague; and in 1964, actress Elizabeth Taylor and actor Richard Burton were married -- for the first time, don't you know. 

Anyway, other than becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy when you believe that something will go wrong on a particularly day or date, we say that the ides of March, historically and literarily significant though they may be, constitute just another superstition.