The Ides of March.

In the Roman calendar, Ides indicated a day in the middle of the month; and, in March, it was the fifteenth day.

In early history, Mars, the Roman god of war, was honored with a festival and a military parade on the Ides of March.

And, of course, in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was assassinated (stabbed twenty-three times) on the Ides of March by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and a group of other Senators who feared his power and popularity (there were, according to the account of Plutarch (Mestrius Plutarchus) sixty conspirators in all).

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The quotes Beware the Ides of March and Et tu, Bruté?, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (~1599), are irrevocably etched into my memory. Caesar did not heed the soothsayer’s warning (from earlier in the play); and, during the assassination, he stopped struggling when he realized how deep the conspiracy was — when he discovered that his close and trusted friend, Brutus, was among the murderous conspirators.

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But Julius Caesar was extremely popular with the middle and lower classes, and the assassination precipitated civil war and the end of the Roman Republic.

Caesar was eventually made a member of the Nine Worthies; the Princes of men, heroes who epitomized the ideal qualities of moral virtue (particularly as regarded military courage and leadership).

The Nine Worthies so honored were: Hector, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon.