by 
On this Day:
On March 15, 44 BC Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome.
The Ides of March is the 74th day in the Roman calendar, corresponding to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts. In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.
In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, “Well, the Ides of March are come”, implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied “Aye, they are come, but they are not gone.” This meeting is famously dramatised in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March.” The Roman biographer Suetonius identifies the “seer” as a haruspex named Spurinna.
Caesar’s death was a closing event in the crisis of the Roman Republic, and triggered the civil war that would result in the rise to sole power of his adopted heir Octavian (later known as Augustus). Writing under Augustus, Ovid portrays the murder as a sacrilege, since Caesar was also the Pontifex Maximus of Rome and a priest of Vesta. On the fourth anniversary of Caesar’s death in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, Octavian executed 300 senators and equites who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius, the brother of Mark Antony. The executions were one of a series of actions taken by Octavian to avenge Caesar’s death. Suetonius and the historian Cassius Dio characterised the slaughter as a religious sacrifice, noting that it occurred on the Ides of March at the new altar to the deified Julius (per Wikipedia).
First, a Story:
Who did they get to referee a tennis match between Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony?…
The Roman Umpire!
Second, a Song:
History Television launched in 1997 and was not initially related to its then similarly named American counterpart. During History Television’s first several years of operation, despite sharing a similar programming focus, it rarely, if ever, acquired programming from the American channel. The phrase “Not available in Canada” was used heavily during The History Channel’s early years in promotional ads on American channels that were imported to Canadian pay television providers, particularly A&E.
Beginning in the late 2000s, several History (US) shows were acquired for Canadian broadcast on History Television. On May 30, 2012, then-parent company Shaw Media announced that it would rebrand History Channel as a Canadian version of the US History channel in the fall of 2012, through a licensing agreement with A+E Networks. History Television would be relaunched on August 12, 2012; with another Shaw-owned, specialty channel relaunched as a Canadian version of H2 soon after.
On April 1, 2016, Corus Entertainment merged with Shaw Media, and as a result, now holds the Canadian English and French-language rights to History programming.
Per History Canada: On the Roman calendar, the Ides of March corresponds to March 15 — a date notoriously known as the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
Here is History Canada’s take on the Ides of March, courtesy of YouTube.com. I hope you enjoy this!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZgJZIeIixQ)
Thought for the Day:
“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.” – Julius Caesar
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Have a great day!
Dave & Colleen
© 2021 David J. Bilinsky and Colleen E. Bilinsky
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