15 March—Beware the Ides of March! That’s what the soothsayer warned the first emperor of Rome in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” (“The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar” in the First Folio). Great dramaturgy but of questionable historicity. JC was indeed assassinated on 15 March—the Ides—in 44 BC, but it’s unlikely he had been warned or advised to stay home. And what difference would it have made, if the soothsayer really knew what he was talking about?

Shakespeare got his plot from Plutarch, who wasn’t even born till a century after JC’s death and was Greek anyway. And Plutarch was as unreliable in his day as CNN and Fox News are today, known for inaccuracy and bias, distorting the historical record to make it fit and serve whatever their particular and parochial ideas and purposes may be.

Getting back to the Ides of March, Idus Martiae in Caesar’s time or Idus Martii in Late Latin, it’s the 74th day in the Roman calendar, corresponding to 15 March. Like virtually every day in ancient times and even today, it was marked by a number of religious observances.

But the Ides of March was especially dreaded by ancient Romans as a deadline for settling debts. Perhaps that’s why some classical scholar in Woodrow Wilson’s administration moved income tax day from its original 1 March established in 1913 to 15 March in 1918. Not being a dogmatic historian nor having done any research on the subject, I couldn’t say. In all events, the Eisenhower administration moved the IRS day of reckoning to 15 April in 1955. But 15 April isn’t the Ides.

Every month in the Roman calendar does have an Ides, of course, but it’s the 13^th in most months, the 15^th only in March, May, July, and October, originally having been determined by the full moon. In the earliest Roman calendar, in fact, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year. And never forget that the Ides of every month were sacred to Jupiter, the supreme deity of the Romans.

Imagine Brutus lifting his toga for a full moon to pay homage to Jupiter, as the Flamen Dialis, Jupiter’s high priest, led a sacrificial lamb along the Via Sacra to the poor creature’s cruel fate . . .