--- R C Macaulay wrote: > I wonder if Caesar saw it coming ?
Maybe his calendar leaped into the way, Richard <g> -- bit of trivia and warped history lesson for those who never miss an appointment ... and coming to you post-"leap-day" when many are missed.... In 45 B.C. a year before the "Ides" thing- old Julie, alarmed that the Roman calendar (and a few other things) were becoming a joke all around the Mediterranean, added the first "leap" or extra day to the month of February, and proclaimed that every four years, it would be done again. Caesar had been consulting with Egypt's top astronomer, not to mention their head of state, who (the former) informed him that: even in Rome, each year has exactly 365.25 days instead of what his own experts had been telling him (364). While he was single-handedly making the calendar fix, and also pissing-off the Senate & religious establishment even more than usual, Julie took the opportunity to name to a month after himself. We all know what happened the following year ;-) Brutus missed a number of important engagements due to not having understood that an extra day had been added in Julie's Calendar changeover, and was so infuriated that he let his temper get the best of him. Plutarch relates that Caesar had ample warning, but his calendar was equally a mess due to all the confused leaping around. A blind mystic had warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the Ides; and when Caesar was on his way to the senate that day, thinking it was the day before the night-after, he mocked the seer, jesting: "The Ides of March has come" ... the mystic muttered: "Yes, the Ides has come but not passed...." but it was too confusing for JC to sort it all out.... ... and the rest is history KdF Jones
