The eNotes Blog Toga! Toga! Toga! Its the Ides ofMarch!

Toga! Toga! Toga! Its the Ides ofMarch! In William Shakespeares Julius Caesar, a soothsayer warns the would-be king to Beware the Ides of March. Like the basis for many of Shakespeares plays, the impetus is not completely original. In this case, he adapted the line from Plutarchs much tamer rendering in The Life of Julius Caesar which advises Caesar to take heed of the day of the Ides of March. Shakespeare popularized the warning by adding a little punch to the original. Caesar would have done well to listen to the soothsayer, stay home, and catch up on some reading. After all,  the admonition wasnt the only portent of doom. His wife, Calphurnia, had dreamed that bad things were going to happen to him, and even offers to let him blame her for being unduly anxious as an excuse for him to stay home on that fated day. For a bit of background, the Ides of March involved a series of complicated formulas predicated on lunar activity and was used in the Julian calendar, a system which Caesar himself instituted. There are other ides but not all fall on the fifteenth. The Ides of January, for example, falls on the  thirteenth. Julius Caesar was indeed assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. by a gang of conspirators, including   Cassius and Brutus. (Et tu, Brute? a dying Caesar opines. In French, the familiar use of tu rather than vous here bespeaks the intimacy in which Caesar had held his supposed friend.) Assuming no one has had dreams of your demise and a straggly stranger hasnt whispered threats into your ear, you may want to celebrate the Ides. Here are some modern ways of doing so: Hop a plane to Rome and join the Hash House Harriers for their annual Toga Run. Pop open a craft house brew from Founders Brewing Company, who annually releases new beers on the Ides of March. Bate thy breath and sit upon thine hands and watch  the George Clooney movie The Ides of March. and, of course, TOGA TOGA TOGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (John Belushi in Animal House.)