ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include why monkey butts are so colorful, Nikola Tesla's birthday, how to buy your kid's way into college, and the 47 names Disney considered for the 7 dwarfs.
Innovation, regulation, and illegal shipping containers: How an Illegal Shipping Container Reshaped the World Economy.
ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include Elvis Presley's birthday, the woman who slept with both Napoleon and Wellington, the business of making the fake money used in movies and TV shows, and advice from 1595 on how to slim down in fourteen days.
(It is not the custom of the Roman people to negotiate with an armed enemy.)
* N. B. Commentaerii de bello Gallico (English: Commentaries on the Gallic War) is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative.
Que volumnus et credimus libenter, et quae sentimus ipsi, reliquos sentire speramus.
~ Caesar (Commentaerii de bello civili, II, 27)
(What we desire we readily believe, and what we ourselves think we expect others to think.)
Satis diu vel naturae vixi, gloriae.
~ Caesar (reported in Cicero, Pro Marcello, VIII, as having been said by Caesar two years before his death.)
(I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.)
This bridge over the River Fiumicino is believed by some to have been the crossing used by Caesar
A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) (of Caesar, in Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra)
Today is the anniversary of the day in 49 B.C. when Julius Caesar (wiki) - noting, Iacta alea esto ("The die is cast") - crossed the Rubicon River (wiki) with his legions to march on Rome in defiance of both the Senate and Roman law, which forbade any general from crossing the Rubicon and entering Italy proper with a standing army. To do so was treason. This tiny stream would reveal Caesar's intentions and mark the point of no return.
Born around 100 B.C. into one of the oldest patrician families of the republic, Caesar began his political career as a member of the popular party in 78 B.C., at first supported Pompey in his grasp for power, and served as governor of Spain.
In 63, as Pontifex Maximus (essentially the high priest of the Roman government), he was responsible for the institution of the Julian calendar and in 60 organized the coalition known as the First Triumvirate, with Pompey and Crassus, to rule the city. He fully established his military reputation in the Gallic Wars from 58 to 49 B.C., but with the demise of the triumvirate, civil war loomed, and Caesar "crossed the Rubicon" to join the struggle for power.
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the frontier of his province, he halted for a while, and revolving in his mind the importance of the step he meditated, he turned to those about him, saying: 'Still we can retreat! But once let us pass this little bridge, - and nothing is left but to fight it out with arms!'
Even as he hesitated this incident occurred. A man of strikingly noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, and played upon a pipe. To hear him not merely some shepherds, but soldiers too came flocking from their posts, and amongst them some trumpeters. He snatched a trumpet from one of them and ran to the river with it; then sounding the "Advance!" with a piercing blast he crossed to the other side. At this Caesar cried out, 'Let us go where the omens of the Gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE IS NOW CAST!'
He quickly prevailed, pursuing Pompey to Egypt and establishing Cleopatra as a local satrap there. Upon his return to Rome, he used his influence over the people to become a populist autocrat and was appointed "dictator for life" in 44 B.C. However, his dictatorial powers aroused enormous resentment within the Senate, and he was assassinated there on the Ides of March of 44 by a conspiracy led by Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus.
In addition to his skills as a statesman and general, Caesar was a brilliant writer and orator, leaving us such classics as his "Commentaries on the Gallic Wars(wiki).
Where is the Rubicon? Due to frequent flooding of the plains around the Rubicon, the river frequently changed its course and it became unclear which of three waterways it was.
ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include Pi Day, Britain’s ship made of ice, why some car gas tanks are on the right and some on the left, and, for Einstein's birthday, the story of the guy who kept his brain for 43 years,
Today is the Ides of March - notionally, in the Roman lunar calendar, the day of the full moon that marked the midpoint of the month.* It was on this date in 44 B.C. that Julius Caesar (wiki) was assassinated by a conspiracy headed by Marcus Junius Brutus (wiki) and Quintus Cassius Longinus, who feared Caesar's growing power in the Roman Senate.
The most famous portrayal of the events of that infamous day is found in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, based largely on Sir Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives** and likely first presented at the Globe in the summer of 1599.
Julius Caesar:
Soothsayer: Caesar!
Caesar: Ha! who calls?
Casca: Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!
Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry "Caesar." Speak! Caesar is turned to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
Caesar: What man is that?
Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
Caesar: Set him before me; let me see his face.
Casca: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.
Caesar: What sayst thou to me now? speak once again.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.
~ William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act I, Sc. 2)
Pulling Caesar’s toga was the signal to begin the attack
On the fateful day, Caesar encounters the soothsayer again:
Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar, but not gone.
~ Ibid., Act III, Sc. 1
Caesar: Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!
~ Id.
The corpse was still lying where it had fallen, abased and stained with blood - that of a man who had marched west to the British Isles and the Ocean,and intended to march east to the thrones of Parthia and India, so that they too might be made subject to a single empire and all land and sea be governed from one capital; but no one dared to remain and recover his body. Those of his friends who were present had fled, those who were outside were hiding in their houses; or changed their clothes and departed for the countryside and the nearby towns.
* In the Julian calendar (reformed in 46 B.C.), the ides were the 15th days of March, May, July, and October - and the 13th days of all the other months. From 222 until 154 B.C., the ides of March was the day on which the new consuls of the Roman Republic entered office. The Romans did not number days of a month sequentially from the first through the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st) of the following month. The Ides occurred near the midpoint, on the 13th for most months, but on the 15th for March, May, July, and October. The Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. On the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.
** According to Plutarch, Caesar was not killed in the Senate itself, but rather in the Theater of Pompey, as the main Senate building was being restored at the time, so the Theater was being used as a substitute. The actual death of Caesar appears to have gone something like this, (from Plutarch's Lives):
Casca gave him the first cut, in the neck, which was not mortal nor dangerous, as coming from one who at the beginning of such a bold action was probably very much disturbed. Caesar immediately turned about, and laid his hand upon the dagger and kept hold of it. And both of them at the same time cried out, he that received the blow, in Latin, “Vile Casca, what does this mean?” and he that gave it, in Greek, to his brother, “Brother, help!” Upon this first onset, those who were not privy to the design were astonished and their horror and amazement at what they saw were so great, that they durst not fly nor assist Caesar, nor so much as speak a word. But those who came prepared for the business enclosed him on every side, with their naked daggers in their hands. Which way soever he turned, he met with blows, and saw their swords leveled at his face and eyes, and was encompassed, like a wild beast in the toils, on every side. For it had been agreed they should each of them make a thrust at him, and flesh themselves with his blood; for which reason Brutus also gave him one stab in the groin. Some say that he fought and resisted all the rest, shifting his body to avoid the blows, and calling out for help, but that when he saw Brutus’s dagger drawn, he covered his face with his robe and submitted, letting himself fall, whether it were by chance, or that he was pushed in that direction by his murderers, at the foot of the pedestal on which Pompey’s statue stood, and which was thus wetted with his blood.
** Nikolaus of Damascus was a Greek historian who befriended Herod the Great and Augustus Caesar, Julius's nephew, heir, and later Roman emperor. This excerpt from his fragmentary Universal History is believed to be the earliest account of Caesar's murder.
*** After the Roman people were aroused against the conspirators by Marc Antony, Brutus and Cassius fled to Syria and in 42 B.C. were defeated by Antony and Octavian at the battle of Phillipi. This left the way open for Octavian to seize power and - as Caesar Augustus - become the first Roman emperor.
