'Last year it was "Beware the nuts in May"! :eyeroll:'

It's that magical time of year again.

So far, no one has assassinated me.

:bump:

A bit late. Oh well.

I still don't know what this is. To me it's just a thread title on this forum that appears but once a year.

EDIT: Apart from 2023 it seems.

Butterfield wrote:

I still don't know what this is. To me it's just a thread title on this forum that appears but once a year.

EDIT: Apart from 2023 it seems.

It’s a well known saying (well ‘Beware the Ides of March’ is, coming - in that form in English - from Shakespeare), connected to the assassination of Julius Caesar, which took place on the idus of Martius…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March

However, in addition to being a crucial turning point in the history and development of western civilisation culminating in things like the downfall of the republic and the suicide of Cleopatra, it has always been a significant date…

The month of Martius was named for the god Mars, whose "birthday" was celebrated on the 1st, but the Ides of each month were sacred to Jupiter, the Romans' supreme deity. The Flamen Dialis, Jupiter's high priest, led the "Ides sheep" (ovis Idulis) in procession along the Via Sacra to the arx, where it was sacrificed.[5]

We only did Romeo and Juliet at school. And that was annoying.

Butterfield wrote:

We only did Romeo and Juliet at school. And that was annoying.

Well it’s only the English form of the saying that’s Shakespearean. It has a much older and wider significance. It’s the middle point of the month of the god of war, on which in 44BC one of the great inflection points of human civilisation hinges due to a murder which was foretold. It’s one of the great butterfly moments in history, which everything would be unimaginably different if it hadn’t happened. Symbolically, therefore, beware the middle day of March.