What is the Ides of March? History explained behind the threatening date

Every year March leads to the celebrations of St. Patrick Day, the beginning of spring and the month of women's history. It also comes with a threatening warning: “Fit the Ides of March.”

The sentence comes from William Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar”, in which a Soothsayer provides the Roman emperor the notorious warning before his assassination. Shakespeare was strongly based on the work of the Greek historian Plutarch to create his game, and the true Caesar may have been given a similar warning before he was on March 15, 44 BC. BC was murdered

The play was one of the early tragedies of Shakespeare, and the line in its audience, who knew in the history of the Roman Empire, had been resonance, according to Eric Rasmussen, a Shakespeare scholar and English professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“The entire audience would know that, oh yes, on March 15th, that will be Now The day he is murdered on, “said Rasmussen.

What is the Ides of March?

Roman calendars defined days using three markings: the IDEs, calendars and nones, according to Dwayne Meisner, a teacher of classic studies at the Campion College of the University of Regina in Canada. The first day of the month was the calendar, the in the middle of the month were the Ides and the nones fell between them, said Meisner.

“Whatever they were in part of the month, it is either the number of days up to the calendars or the nones or the Ides, and so they knew what day of the month it was,” said Meisner.

Meisner said the Romans counted the time in this way while using the lunar calendar, and continued to do so after Caesar created the Julian calendar that was based on the sun year and contained a gear day every four years.

The Roman Empire is everywhere in Tikkok: Is the way in which men and women really think so differently?

When are the IDEs from March 2025?

The IDEs of March fall on Saturday, March 15, 2025.

What happened to the Ides of March?

Since Caesar's assassination attempt, the Ides of March have been used as the title with films, songs and consequences of television. And on this day, several other threatening events occurred.

On March 15, 1889, seven American, German and British warships in the port of Apia, Samoa, were sitting as a civil war during a break. The patient situation ended when a fatal cyclone hit the harbor and damaged six of the ships and killed about 200 people, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

On March 15, 1939, Adolf Hitler moved the Nazi troops to Czechoslovakia, the country annexed and ended the practice of appeasement. Later this year, Great Britain declared war against Germany and triggered the Second World War.

On March 15, 2003, the World Health Organization Sars declared a “worldwide health threat”. In the course of the outbreak, more than 8,000 people got sick and almost 800 people died in over 37 countries.

Contribution: Gabe Haarari, USA Today

This article originally appeared in USA today: Ides of March: When is it and why should you be careful?