The Ides of March

Now that it's April, I can say it.  I hate March.  I hated this March and I hated last March and I've hated March for as long as I can remember.  Twenty years ago my mother died in March.  Every year bad things happen in March, to me and to people I love.  I go into a blue funk and a brown study. T.S. Eliot had it wrong,

I began the month burying my sweet old horse and ended it with a speeding ticket.  In between, my husband, son and daughter all suffered significant setbacks.  Their stories aren't mine to tell, but in the way of families, their problems weigh heavier than my own.  I hate March.

Which of course leads me to wonder about the Ides of March. Clearly not a great thing for Caesar, but what the heck are Ides anyway, and should I worry about them?

Turns out whoever invented the Roman calendar either had a sick sense of humor or was a very odd duck.  Days of the months were not numbered one, two, three, four or first, second, third, fourth.  Dates were counted back from three fixed points based on the lunar calendar:  the Kalends at the start, named for the day that bills were due; the Nones, either the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month; and the Ides, the 13th or 15th.  The Ides of March was the 15th.

The unnamed days of the month would count back from the named days, so March 4 would be "IV Nones", or four days before the 7th, and March 14 would be "I Ides", one day before the 15th. As odd as this seems, it's at least a little consistent with Roman numerals which can also count back from significant numbers -- e.g. IV for 4 and IX for 9.  Kind of makes you wonder about the Romans.

We all know that Julius Caesar was warned to "beware the Ides of March" before his demise at the hands of 60 senators.  Those actual words were a bit of poetic license by Shakespeare, but according to Barry Strauss in The Death of Caesar, the historical ruler did visit a haruspex named Spurinna on February 15, 44 BC, and sacrificed a bull so that the soothsayer could predict his future.  Spurinna warned JC that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days, i.e. until March 15.  On that date Caesar told Spurinna that the Ides had come and was answered, "Aye, they have come but not gone."  That should have kept JC away from the senate, but the rest, as they say, is history.

Next question, what the heck is a haruspex?  Haruspices were people trained to read omens from  the entrails of sheep and poultry, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep. Haruspicy was a kind of specialty within the wider practice of divination from animal entrails, brought to Rome via the Etruscans, who were apparently quite good at it.  Caesar's soothsayer was surely of Etruscan descent, as Spurinna was a common Etruscan name.

Snide aside:  How do people come up with this stuff?  I mean, say I'm thinking about changing jobs or invading Persia and I want an idea of how it's likely to go.  I might think to pull petals off a daisy: good luck, bad luck, good luck, oops.  Or, if I need a bit more nuance, maybe I could try to interpret the clouds.  Are they white, dark, puffy, flat, shaped like duckies or H-bombs?  But no, of course I'll  slaughter some farm animals and look at their livers.  How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.

Back in the day, of course, it wasn't quite as bizarre as it appears to us now.  It would be natural for priests performing ritual sacrifices to look  at the carcass of a healthy sheep or calf and think the gods would  be pleased, whereas if the organs were diseased, maybe not so much.   Mesopotamians believed the liver to be the source of blood and hence of life, so paying particular attention to that organ would make sense.  And the more obscure something is the more privileged the practitioner, so you end up with exquisitely complicated liver topography that only experienced haruspices could interpret.

Whatever.  According to one story, Caesar's bull lacked a heart, always a bad sign.  According to others, Spurinna was also an astrologer and his prediction was primarily based on the planets.   In any case, Caesar took the prediction seriously but chose to go to the senate anyway.  He must have really hated March.

March is actually lovely in North Central Florida.  They days are warm and evenings cool. Redbuds and dogwoods line the county roads with pink and white. Deciduous trees begin to leaf out species by species, from sweetgums to cypress.  Robins and cedar waxwings visit in great numbers on their way back north. Winter gardens are harvested, spring gardens are planted, and potato gardens grow bushy and tall.

Now the house is filled with mosquitoes.  Tomato plants sag in the sun,  Pollen wafts down from the sky.  The humidity is creeping up, and highs in the 90s are  predicted.  Hello April, I love you.