Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Volume XV

Great Caesar's ghost! Today is the two thousandth and fifty-third anniversary of the soothsayer telling Julius Caesar to "beware the ides of March." Okay, I don't know if today is that day, but I think that it was a couple of days before Brutus and Cassius went all stabby-stabby in the Theatre of Pompey when the seer warned Caesar to watch hisself on the ides.

Time for some genuine edumication, kids. The "ides" is the fifteenth day of March, May, July and October. For all the other months, it is the thirteenth (so, the Ides of April is April 13). The phrase, in Latin, is "Idus Martias" (ee-deuce mar-tea-oss), and literally means "the half division of March". It is thought to celebrate the full moon of the month, and as March celebrates Mars, the Roman God of War, it was a day filled with military parades and celebrations of the vast Roman legions.

Being that Caesar was quite the military man, what better day to name himself emperor of Rome? None, and so, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar summoned together the Roman Senate in order to inform them that he would now be dictator of Rome for life...which he was. It just happened to be a title he held for all of five minutes. As soon as the title was bequeathed, the senators, led by Cassius and Brutus, decided that Caesar would be better fit as the dictator for life of Switzerland (Helvetica) and thusly filled him full of holes.

In Shakespeare's interpretation of the events, Caesar fought back valiantly until he saw his good friend, Brutus, among the assassins. Once recognizing the brute, Caesar projected, for all to hear--especially those seated in the back--"Et tu, Brutei? Then fall, Caesar." However, according to various reports, Caesar actually said "Kai su, teknon?" (Greek for "And you, child?"), while Plutarch says that Caesar simply hoisted his toga over his head and suffered the pointy ends of the Senators' bared bodkins.

How timely, then, is this week's Latin lesson? Very, is the answer you should be looking for, along with "wow, I shouldn't be wearing this shirt. I shall remove it now."

Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare!

Pronounced: "Saint-ee-oh oll-ee-kwose toe-gah-tose cone-trah may cone-spear-are-aye!"

The best time to work this into conversation, of course, is during a toga party in which there will be individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prevents listing them here.

They took the bar! The whole fucking bar!