This is a excellent quote "Beware the Ides of March" . It's brief, has an ominous tone and a sense of the supernatural. Unfortunately, it's also significantly misunderstood. Most people know it is associated somehow to Shakespeare. But what the heck is definitely an Ide anyway, and exactly where can I purchase one?

So this is a primer: -- The quote comes from Act I, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," as the Roman leader stands amid a crowd and hears a warning from the seer. (When I examine this I can't help picturing a beleaguered U.S. president slouching towards his helicopter, as brash TV reporter Sam Donaldson shouts out questions about some embarrassing scandal.) This is the exchange:

Caesar: Who's it within the press that calls on me?

I hear a tongue shriller than all the music

Cry "Caesar!" Speak, Caesar is turn'd to listen to.

Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

-- What does it portend? This may be the day in 44 B.C. that Caesar will be assassinated by conspirators including Brutus and Cassius. Caesar shrugs away the warning and heads off on his political company. If only recliners, TVs and DVDs had been invented then.

-- So what's an Ide? It is a term from the ancient Roman calendar, symbols of a division based on the moon's phases. It falls on the fifteenth of March, Might, July and October, but on the 13th from the other months.

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