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The Ides of March
Published: 3/15/2010 11:05 AM
Last Modified: 3/15/2010 11:05 AM

The above phrase would probably mean nothing to people if it weren't for students being required to read William Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar."

It's what Caesar is warned about early on in the play: "Beware the Ides of March!" a soothsayer intones. Translation: Hey! Something bad is going to happen March 15.

Because that's all "The Ides of March" is -- it was a way to mark the mid-point of months in the old Roman calendar, which divided months into groups of 29 and 31 days (even numbers, it seems, were thought unlucky). The Ides fell on the 15th day of the month in March, May, July and October, and on the 13th every other month.

Julius Caesar initiated reforms that brought the Roman calendar closer to matching the earth's progress around the sun, which was again modified in the Gregorian calendar that we use today (and which inspired one of Harlan Ellison's best stories, "Paladin of the Lost Hour," but I digress).

Even so, the phrase "The Ides of March" -- and, one would assume, the "Ides" of every other month -- continued to be used to denote a month's midpoint for centuries. Today, the phrase can't help but have a doom-ladened connotation, thanks to the fact that a few dozen of Caesar's subjects decided that March 15, 44 B.C., was the day that he had to go -- and preferably at the points of many knives.

But March 15 is also the day that South Carolina became the first colony to declare its independence from Britain in 1776, the day Maine became a state in 1823, and the date first Internet domain name was registered in 1985. Symbolics.com is still operational -- more than we can say for Julius Caesar.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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