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March 15, 2008
The Ides, the pirates and the other JC.
First, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty...
--Plutarch, on young Caesar
Grandiose and flawed, but still great, I'd say. He made Rome an empire. Today is the Ides of March, death date of Gaius Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 BC-March 15, 44 BC), general, politician, schemer, explorer, writer, alpha male, womanizer, patrician and, as we begin to observe St. Patrick's day, no friend of Gaelic peoples. Caesar conquered what is now France and Belgium--and made Rome more interested in taking on an assortment of Celtic tribes in Britain after his death. An egomaniac, he was both charming, vain dandy and a skilled military leader, with a surprising compassionate streak. A century after his death, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote an enduring bio. Plutarch even mixed it up with armchair psychoanalysis, treating Caesar's life in "parallel" with that of Alexander the Great, another wildly self-assured fellow. The term Ides of March ("March 15") has nothing to do with our hero; "ides" means middle in the earliest Roman calendar, which some say was devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome.
Posted by JD Hull at March 15, 2008 02:09 AM