The Ides of History

In 44bce, the world was stunned on the Ides of March as a group of Roman Senators mercilessly attacked and murdered the sitting roman Dictator, Julius Cæsar. Over the next two thousand years, the story achieved legendary status in literature, theater and film. We watch as Elizabeth Taylor weeps over his death. Shakespeare brings us Marc Anthony’s rhetorical masterpiece, “Friends! Romans, Country men! Lend me your ears!” Even HBO gets into the act, with a sympathetic portrayal of Cæsar that received applause and praise worthy of Marc Anthony. For the men who founded a new country in 1776, history was different than Hollywood and Shakespeare. They had been raised on the writings of Cato, steeped in the concepts of liberty and freedom. To a man, they saw Cæsar as he actually was, as Brutus and Cassius saw him – a usurper of tradition and, more importantly, the absolute law of the Republic of Rome. The fact that Cæsar was beloved, even by his opponents, did not undo the fact that he was trying to put the crown of Rome on his own head. And no Roman republican could accept that. America would choose to follow in the footsteps not of Cæsar, but in the ideas and actions of those who killed him. It was more than just the defeat of a King who ruled them, but an understanding that, like Brutus, they loved liberty more than they loved being Englishmen…