Saturday, March 15, 2008

Today In History - et tu Brute

Screw the fabricated Shakespeare lingo, let's go way back in the way-back machine to see what someone much closer to the source (in the temporal aspect) had to say about today in 44 AD. As per Wikipedia, according to Plutarch (Greek Historian and fabricator, how appropriate when found in Wikipedia) :

"A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: "The Ides of March has come,..." .

I think you know what happened after that, but if not, here it is in a nutsack: Julius Caesar went on his way to a meeting with the Roman Senate. His friend, and loyal Roman, Mark Anthony had learned of the plot and tried to get to him in time to warn him but was out maneuvered by the conspirators. On his way, Caesar was met by a group of senators near a Roman theater, and they went to a room therein to work on a petition. Clever were those Romans, they used a typical ploy that even would work today, getting a rat politician into a backroom to carry out behind the scenes dirty politics. Caesar, in my best guess, probably thought he was going to get what was coming to him in the form of a nice fat bribe. What he got though was something else, he got what was coming to him in the form of realization that the seer had been correct when those in the group of senators attacked him and stabbed him to death. Supposedly, 60 senators took part (must have been a big room) and he was stabbed over 23 times. Included among those senators was Brutus, fiendish backstabbing murdering bastard one time friend of Caesar (a friend up to that moment as far as Caesar had known).
I guess Caesar should have listened to what the seer had to say in the earlier prediction of that day, and to the words of the seer on that day itself. Oh did I forget to mention the seer's reply to Caesar's jest? Here it is, and maybe Caesar should have taken heed:
"Yes, the Ides of March has come, but it has not passed."
If you want to see more about the assassination of Julius Caesar, or about the Ides of March, you can go to my source for the above:
I am sure there has been lots of other stuff written about all this that you could find elsewhere with just a little effort.
All the best,
Glenn B

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