The year and the day
The murder of Julius Caesar took place at a meeting of the Roman Senate on the Ides of March. The Loeb edition of Cassius Dio, as reproduced on LacusCurtius, marks the opening of Book 44, where the conspiracy and the murder are told, with the year 44 BC in its margin. Plutarch spells the date out: the warning Caesar received concerned the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides
.
What made the date famous was what happened on it, and the stories that grew up around it. This reading follows the three ancient writers through the plot, the warnings and the morning itself, and credits each detail to the writer who gives it. Where a writer presents something as a story or a portent, so does this guide.
The plot and its timing
Suetonius says that more than sixty men joined the conspiracy, led by Gaius Cassius and by Marcus and Decimus Brutus. He reports that they first weighed other plans: attacking Caesar at the elections in the Campus Martius, or in the Sacred Way, or at the entrance to the theatre. When a meeting of the Senate was called for the Ides of March in the Hall of Pompey, they chose that time and place instead.
Cassius Dio explains the choice in practical terms. The Senate was the place where Caesar would least expect harm, and the conspirators could bring in swords inside boxes meant for documents, while the other senators would be unarmed. Dio adds that gladiators had been placed in Pompey’s Theatre, nearby, in case anyone tried to resist.
Dio also says the plotters were in a hurry. A report was going round, which he says may have been true or false, that a body of priests was about to propose that Caesar be given the title of king, on the strength of a prophecy that only a king could defeat the Parthians. Brutus and Cassius, as magistrates, would have had to vote, and the conspirators struck before the question could come up. Plutarch gives a related detail from the other side: on the morning itself, Decimus Brutus persuaded Caesar to attend by telling him the senators were ready to vote him king of the provinces outside Italy. That is Decimus’ argument as Plutarch reports it, not an established fact about the Senate’s plans.
The soothsayer’s warning
The most famous story of the day is the warning. Suetonius names the soothsayer as Spurinna and says that, while Caesar was offering sacrifice, Spurinna warned him to beware of danger, which would come not later than the Ides of March
. On the day itself, Suetonius says, Caesar laughed at Spurinna as a false prophet because the Ides had come without harm, and Spurinna answered that they had of a truth come, but they had not gone
.
Plutarch tells the same exchange about an unnamed seer, and he introduces it with care: it is a story told by many
. In his version Caesar greets the seer on his way to the Senate with a joke, and the seer replies softly:
Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.
Cassius Dio has the same exchange too, with the soothsayer’s reply prefaced by “they say”: Ay, it is come but is not yet past.
Three writers, three slightly different translations, one story. Shakespeare turned it into two of the play’s best-known moments. In Act 1, Scene 2, a soothsayer calls out from the crowd, Beware the Ides of March.
In Act 3, Scene 1, on the way to the Capitol, Caesar says The Ides of March are come.
and the soothsayer answers Ay, Caesar; but not gone.
Dreams and omens
All three historians collect portents, and all three present them as reports. Suetonius lists several: a bronze tablet found in an ancient tomb at Capua predicting the murder of a descendant of Troy by his own kin, which he says is vouched for by Caesar’s friend Cornelius Balbus; horses Caesar had dedicated at the Rubicon refusing to graze and weeping; and, on the day before the Ides, a small bird carrying a sprig of laurel chased into the Hall of Pompey and torn apart there.
The dreams of the last night appear in all three writers. Suetonius says Caesar dreamed he was flying above the clouds and clasping the hand of Jupiter, while his wife Calpurnia dreamed that the pediment of their house fell and that he was stabbed in her arms, and the bedroom door flew open by itself. Dio gives almost the same pair of dreams. Plutarch says Calpurnia dreamed she was holding her murdered husband and mourning him, but adds that some tell her dream differently, as the fall of an ornament on the house, a version he credits to the historian Livy.
Plutarch is open about the quality of some of this. He passes over lights in the sky and crashing noises as hardly worth mentioning, and attributes the more dramatic signs, such as men seen on fire and a sacrificed animal found without a heart, to the philosopher Strabo. Dio adds that the sacred arms of Mars kept in Caesar’s house clashed in the night, and that a statue of Caesar in his entrance hall fell and broke as he was setting out.
Plutarch and Suetonius also report a dinner on the evening before at the house of Marcus Lepidus, where the talk turned to the best kind of death. In Plutarch, before anyone else could answer, Caesar called out That which is unexpected.
Suetonius gives the same choice of a sudden death, and treats it as a sign of Caesar’s own wishes rather than as an omen.
The morning of the meeting
According to Suetonius, Caesar hesitated for a long time, both because of the omens and because of poor health, over whether to stay at home. What brought him out was Decimus Brutus, who urged him not to disappoint the senators already waiting. Suetonius says he left almost at the end of the fifth hour. Plutarch adds that Calpurnia begged him not to go, and that Decimus Brutus, whom Caesar trusted enough to name as a second heir in his will, mocked the seers and led Caesar out by the hand. Dio says the conspirators, afraid of a postponement, sent Decimus because he was thought to be Caesar’s devoted friend.
Twice on the way, the historians say, Caesar was handed a written warning and did not read it. Suetonius says a note revealing the plot was put into his hand and he kept it with other papers to read later. Plutarch names the giver as Artemidorus of Cnidus, a teacher of Greek philosophy who knew Brutus’ circle, and quotes his plea: Read this, Caesar, by thyself, and speedily
. The crowd kept Caesar from reading it, though Plutarch notes that some say Artemidorus never reached him at all. Dio tells a similar story of a roll that was received but left unread.
Meanwhile, by Plutarch’s account, Mark Antony was kept talking outside, so that the one man most likely to defend Caesar was not in the room. Dio gives the task to Trebonius; Plutarch, in his Life of Caesar, to Decimus Brutus Albinus. Here the two writers simply disagree.
The place: Pompey’s hall
The meeting was not held in the Senate’s usual house. Suetonius calls the place the Hall of Pompey. Plutarch describes it as a hall that contained a statue of Pompey and had been dedicated by Pompey as an addition to his theatre, and he sees the work of some heavenly power in Caesar dying there, at the foot of the statue of his old enemy. Dio’s detail about gladiators waiting in Pompey’s Theatre fits the same setting.
Shakespeare kept the statue but moved the scene. The Project Gutenberg text heads Act 3, Scene 1 “Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting.” In the next scene Mark Antony tells the crowd that Caesar fell Even at the base of Pompey’s statue
, an echo of Plutarch’s picture of the bloodied pedestal.
What the day became
Suetonius ends his account of Caesar’s life by recording what was decided afterwards: the hall where he was killed was walled up, the Senate was never again to meet on that day, and the Ides of March were to be called the Day of Parricide
, parricide being the killing of a father. Suetonius also records that a column was soon set up in the Forum inscribed To the Father of his Country.
A date in the calendar had become, by public decision, a day marked for ever by the murder.
That is the deepest reason the phrase “the Ides of March” still carries a warning. The soothsayer’s story gave it a dramatic shape; the Roman decree fixed it as a day to remember; and Shakespeare’s two lines, the warning in Act 1 and the reply in Act 3, made it part of ordinary English. The next reading goes into the hall itself and asks what Caesar said, if anything, as the blows fell.
Next: Caesar’s last words: a groan, a question in Greek, or silence