Ides of March unlucky before Caesar?

[Flavia Gemina]

My editor has just asked me to explain the superstition surrounding the Ides of March.

 

Suetonius writes this: Again, when he was offering sacrifice, the soothsayer Spurinna warned him to beware of danger, which would come not later than the Ides of March... and on the day before the Ides of that month a little bird called the king-bird flew into the Hall of Pompey with a sprig of laurel, pursued by others of various kinds from the grove hard by, which tore it to pieces in the hall... Both for these reasons and because of poor health he hesitated for a long time whether to stay at home and put off what he had planned to do in the senate; but at last, urged by Decimus Brutus not to disappoint the full meeting which had for some time been waiting for him, he went forth almost at the end of the fifth hour; and when a note revealing the plot was handed him by someone on the way, he put it with others which he held in his left hand, intending to read them presently. Then, after several victims had been slain, and he could not get favourable omens, he entered the House in defiance of portents, laughing at Spurinna and calling him a false prophet, because the Ides of March were come without bringing him harm; though Spurinna replied that they had of a truth come, but they had not gone.

 

Often days of ill-omen were even-numbered or associated with an historical disaster.

 

The 15th is obviously an odd-number of the month, so that can't be it... Was there a disaster pre-dating Caesar's assassination?

 

In other words, is there any intrinsic superstition associated with the Ides of March BEFORE the assassination of Julius Caesar?

 

Any facts appreciated!

 

Flavia

[Ursus]

All I can tell you is that in the original lunar calendar ( before Caesar's solar reforms), the Ides would have been the full moon, and associated with Jupiter, the sky god.

 

I would think a day consecrated to Jupiter, the supreme god of the state, would actually have been considered lucky if anything, not an ill omen.

[Gaius Octavius]

I don't know how much help this is:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/...edia/296942.stm

 

"Test of time

 

"However, just four hundred years later, the ides seems set only to survive as a literary and historical reference - in spite of it being the date by which debts (including Caesar's) were usually settled."

 

Maybe?

 

Didn't his wife tell him that she had a bad dream about his going to the Senate that day? (Maybe that's just Shakespeare.)

[Primus Pilus]

All I can tell you is that in the original lunar calendar ( before Casear's solar reforms), the Ides would have been the full moon, and associated with Jupiter, the sky god.

 

I would think a day consecrated to Jupiter, the supreme god of the state, would actually have been considered lucky if anything, not an ill omen.

 

I think the bad luck notion came in retrospect. The date itself would not have been a bad omen, but rather other natural signs are more significant.

[Flavia Gemina]

Just as I suspected!

 

Thanks, guys!

 

Flavia

[Nephele]

A few additional facts, if these help...

 

It wasn't merely the Ides of March that was ill-omened for Caesar, but rather the entire 30-day period preceding and merely culminating on the Ides of March. As recorded by Valerius Maximus (8.11.2), the haruspex Spurinna "had forewarned Julius Caesar that he should be wary of the next thirty days as being fraught with peril to his life, a period that was to end with the Ides of March." (Translated by John T. Ramsey.) So the Ides of March became associated with misfortune due to Caesar's assassination on that day, despite the fact that it was really the entire, preceding 30-day period that was predicted to have been a dangerous and unlucky time for Caesar, and Caesar alone. Apparently, Caesar had managed to escape the evils that might have befallen him on any one of those preceding days, only to have met his fate on the last day -- the 15th -- when his luck ran out.

 

Other than Caesar's personal misfortune with that date, the Ides of March seems to have been an auspicious date, as Ovid in his Fasti writes more about the day being the celebration of "the jovial feast of Anna Perenna," in which "the common folk come, and scattered here and there over the green grass they drink, every lad reclining beside his lass." (Translated by James George Frazer.), than about the day commemorating the death of Julius Caesar.

 

-- Nephele

Edited June 21, 2007 by Nephele

[M. Porcius Cato]

Anna is a fascinating case of a thoroughly home-grown Roman goddess. According to Wikipedia, "The idea of the good soul and the bad soul offering advice from above a person's shoulders is thought to have come from the idea that Anna told Dido what to do with Aeneas."

 

Anyway, I obviously celebrate the Ides for an altogether different reason.

[The Augusta]

Anyway, I obviously celebrate the Ides for an altogether different reason.

 

Ah, as do I, Cato. Had there been no 'Ides of March', there would have been no Augustus! (Sorry - I couldn't resist that one...)

[Leguleius]

Livy (XXXI.6) also mentions that the Ides of March was the day when consuls were historically sworn in, before that was moved to January. Another indication of the day actually being auspicious.

 

Tom