The Union Statesman

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Okay, as I am one of the last remaining licensed Latin teachers (I really am), I therefore must explain again the concept of the Ides of March:  The Roman Calendar was really technologically amazing for its time, no less so perhaps than the Aztec Calendar (I also have a Spanish Teaching license, and it is ironic or obvious that both cultures at least de facto worshipped the sun.)  It had 360 days in a year broken over 10 or 12 months depending on which version you’re looking at.  Of course, because it’s a lunar calendar, it will have roughly 30 days in a month.  One thing about the roman calendar, it had a halftime show–rather, a point from which the counting was done differently.  This point was generally on the 13th of the month, except for four months, when it was on the 15th.  So the ides of March is on March 15.  (I wonder if the 13th is a precursor to Friday the 13th…)

You may know that the 15th of March is the day Julius Caesar was supposedly killed.  Kids, Caesar was a populist, like a South American dictator or a Democrat–he bought the poor people off until they forgot what the proper role of government was; and anyone who caters to special interests eventually gets betrayed.  In Caesar’s case, he was killed by all his buddies, who thought he went too far or didn’t think he went far enough in morphing the Republic into the Empire.  This is basically, almost line per line, the basis of Star Wars, and Caesar was the Emperor.  That’s part of why they’re always dressed in Roman robes and have hyper-Romanesque names like “Palpatine.”

So, short story short, don’t sell out, because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and 1/365th of the time that payday is on March 15th…

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