The Ides of March, 2008

Wouldn't it take a certain arrogance or pride to hold a party on the Ides of March?
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? To unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humanity?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:

-- there'd be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-- the keg would run flat, or worse, dry
-- Jerry's falsetto during "Danny Boy" would shatter our windshields
-- the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses

But, then again, the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And a wiser poet than I once said, "I'd walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog, for a well-pulled pint."
Who am I, a New York Jew, to argue?
Was it Yeats? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe - a Brit - who coined for us "the Ides of March."
I first read it in 10th grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the second-floor bathroom stall was accurate, eats pills.
In Act 1, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer, yes, a soothsayer, (Rome was lousy with them in those days) cries, "Beware the Ides of March!"

He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bad luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves on the much more common, unlucky clover.

Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed.
But there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a violent storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act 1, Scene 3:

"Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction."

And, if that's not enough, here's the dream of Calpurnia (wife of Caesar) from Act II, Scene 2:

"Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them."

So the heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,

And what does Caesar do?

Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick's Day party for all he cared.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once," he smugly answers his spouse.

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."

You can say that again. He gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
Always, as my Calpurnia would say, listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer's prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What's a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my father, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Antony's soliloquy for Mr. Wills' class:

Quoth he: "He who drinks beer, Shakespeare."

-- Steve Hodin