15th March – The Ides of March
Ides simply referred to the first new moon of a given month, which usually fell between the 13th and 15th. In fact, the Ides of March once signified the new year, which meant celebrations and rejoicing.
Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome on this date in 44 BCE.
March 15 (the 75th day of the Roman calendar), famously marked as the “Ides of March” (a.k.a, the middle of March), was once best known as the date by which you had to settle your debts from the prior year (marking, as it did, the first full moon of the Roman new year). In 44 BC some serious debts were collected when a group of some 40 senators, including Marcus Junius Brutus (a.k.a, Quintus Caepio Brutus, a.k.a. “Et tu, Brute?”), assassinated Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate chambers. The Roman calendar is no more (the switch to the modern Gregorian calendar began in 1582, but the Ides of March live on in popular culture thanks to William Shakespeare.
The Jews of Palestine had backed Caesar in his successful civil war with Pompey, who had massacred some 12,000 of them while conquering Jerusalem, violated the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and sold thousands of Jews into slavery. (Pompey’s ally Crassus additionally emptied the Temple Treasury into his own pockets.)
Once in power as emperor, Caesar returned the Jaffa port to Jewish control, allowed the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, and lowered taxes.
Caesar’s successors, Marc Antony and Octavian, would bring to power in Judea King Herod, a great urban builder who was also a mass-murderer of rabbis and other leaders of the Jewish people.
“Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered.”) —Julius Caesar