The Ides Of March 2024

Today is the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated back in 44 B.C. on the steps of the Theater of Pompey. A seer had warned Caesar to "beware the Ides of March," but he unfortunately did not heed the warning and beef up his security detail. When we were in Rome back in 2019, my sister Susan and I stayed near the Campo de' Fiori, and I read in Rick Steve's guidebook on Rome that you could see part of one of the original walls of the Theater of Pompey incorporated into one of the buildings there. I spent a lot of time trying to find that damn wall, but without success. Then I read on the internet that the ruins in the center of Largo del Torre Argentina, a number of blocks away from Campo de' Fiori, have reopened to tourists after 2000 years or so, and it mentioned that the Theater of Pompey was once located there. Just for fun, I checked out a map of Rome, and it showed the site of that theater located just around the corner from Via Dei Chiavari, the street where our hotel was located. I had taken a number of photographs of that street while we were staying there, including the one above. So where was that theater really located? Digging deeper, I found that the Theater of Pompey was quite large, and so it is very possible the complex took up the entire area. That seems to make sense, and so I am just going to accept it as fact. But I do have to wonder if the ghost of Julius Caesar haunts that area after dark. Perhaps that is why Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet on the old Superman television series, always used to exclaim "Great Caesar's Ghost" whenever he got exited about something. That makes sense to me, too.