Today is the Ides of March, the day that ancient Romans settled their debts.[1]

And it is also the day in 44 B.C. when Julius Caesar died in the Curia of Pompey, stabbed to death, betrayed most of all by his friend Marcus Brutus, immortalized in William Shakespeare’s play, the eponymous “Julius Caesar.”

The events of that day still show up in literature and the arts, centuries after Shakespeare’s play appeared in 1599.

American writer Thornton Wilder wrote The Ides of March (1948), a novel based in part on Shakespeare’s play. Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, reviewed it for the Wilder family website. George Clooney starred in the 2011 film “The Ides of March,” which is eerily relevant today as the United States currently replays similar scenes of political corruption and complicity. Of course, artists found the subject of Caesar’s assassination enticing, so we have Joseph-Désiré Court’s notable 19th-century painting, The Death of Caesar, among many other artists’ renditions of that blood-drenched day.[2]

I first read Shakespeare’s play in high school, as did many of us, (and hopefully many still do).

Shakespeare’s ability to delve into the minds and motives of his characters is a never-ending delight.

Take, for example, Caesar’s analysis of Cassius:

Yet if my name were liable to fear,

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,

As thou dost, Anthony, he hears no music.

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit

That could be moved to smile at anything.

Such men as he be never at heart’s ease,

Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,

And therefore are they very dangerous. [I.ii.188-211]

Hmmm . . .

Just reading between the lines here. Except for the bit about reading, I suspect Shakespeare knew a thing or two about a certain kind of man, you know, the one who never has enough, behaves impulsively without thinking of the consequences, and expects the world to fall at his feet.

A soothsayer whispers the truth to Caesar, and the world changes, because he hears, but doesn’t really hear:

CAESAR: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar.” Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.

CAESAR: Ha! Who calls?

CASCA: Bid every noise be still. Peace, yet again!

CAESAR: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar.” Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.

SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR: What man is that?

BRUTUS: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Set him before me. Let me see his face.

CASSIUS: Fellow, come from the throng.
The Soothsayer comes forward.
Look upon Caesar.

CAESAR: What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.

SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March.

CAESAR: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.

[I.ii.15-23]

Ah, when those who do not hear the words spoken to them, what can we do?

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[1] See HERE for more on the history of the Ides of March.

[2] Tappan Wilder, “The Ides of March Then and Now.” George Clooney directed the film, “The Ides of March” (2011). See Andrew Shore’s compilation of paintings of Caesar’s murder. Andrew Wyeth painted his interpretation of the day, too. And let’s not forget Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998).

[3] See the Folger Shakespeare Library on the play and the Ides of March.

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[I.ii]

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[1] The Ides of March represented “misfortune and doom,” and was historically a day devoted to Jupiter, the Roman god of the sky. The full moon likely appeared on that day as well, it being an Ides or the middle of the month.

[2] Tappan Wilder, “The Ides of March Then and Now.” “The Ides of March,” a film directed by George Clooney. See Andrew Shores’s compilation of paintings of Caesar’s assassination. Harold Bloom comments on “Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998, pp. 104-118), worth reading.

[3] For more about the Ides of March, see the Folger Shakespeare Library’s comments.