True or False? March 15th was also called the Ides of March.

True!

In the ancient Roman calendar, each month had an Ides. In March, May, July, and October, the Ides fell on the 15th day. In every other month, the Ides fell on the 13th. The word Ides derives from a Latin word which means “to divide.” The Ides were originally meant to mark the full moon, but because calendar months and lunar months were different lengths, they quickly got out of step. 


We should beware of the Ides of March!  Why? 

Caesar: The Ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but no gone.

-- Shakespeare.  Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1 

Thanks to Shakespeare's indelible dramatization, March 15—also called the Ides of March—is forever linked with the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar, and with prophecies of doom. Until that day Julius Caesar ruled Rome. The traditional Republican government had been supplanted by a temporary dictatorship, one that Caesar very much wished to make permanent. But Caesar's quest for power spawned a conspiracy to have him killed, and on the Ides of March, a group of prominent Romans brought him to an untimely end in the Senate House.

The Assassination of Caesar in the 1963 movie Cleopatra