What are the ‘Ides of March’?

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — It’s March 15, and that means the “Ides of March” are here.

Aside from being the name of a late 60s, early 70s band that had a hit with kind of a creepy song about a guy trying to pick up a young girl in his car, what exactly are the “Ides of March?”

A lot of people will tell you that it’s from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” where a fortune teller tells Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March.” Spoiler Alert: He doesn’t and is stabbed to death on, you guessed it, the Ides of March.

So, we get it, it’s from the play, but what are the Ides? Well, it has to do with how Romans broke up the counting of days.

They broke months down into groups of days, with specific days getting a name, and then the days in between not having a name. So, Kalends was the name of Day 1, then depending on the length of the month, 2-6 were referred to as the days “before the Nones.”

The Nones were on the 7th day, days “8-14 before the Ides,” and the Ides being the 15th. Everything after the 15th was referred to as before Kalends, and so on.

Interestingly enough, the whole thing with a soothsayer warning Caesar to beware, actually sort of happened. In fact, she warned him more than once.

The thing of it is though, the political climate at the time was pretty awful, so it was kind of like pointing out the obvious. Unless she could give him specifics, it was kind of like saying water is wet.

Either way, ever since, the day has kind of taken on a sort of superstition of the kind we typically see for a Friday the 13th or a full moon. However, there’s really nothing sinister about it.

It’s really just the byproduct of the odd way the Romans marked their days.