The Ides of March: Meaning, How Caesar Was Killed, and What the Ancient Sources Say

Start hereSuetonius says Caesar died with only a groan at the first blow. Plutarch has him cry out in Latin to Casca. So what did he say on the Ides of March?

The Ides of March is 15 March in the ancient Roman calendar. The term comes from the Roman calendar, where the Ides marked the middle of a month. The phrase is remembered for one day. On 15 March 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the senate in Rome.

011. What the Ides was

The Ides was a fixed day in every Roman month. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the ides as “the 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of the other months in the ancient Roman calendar”. It traces the word to the Latin Idus, probably from Etruscan.

Macrobius, a Latin writer who lived more than four centuries after Caesar, offers several guesses about the name. His preferred one: the Ides is the day that divides the month, because iduare meant “to divide” in Etruscan (our translation). He adds that all the Ides were given over to Jupiter.

Our reading: today the phrase mostly lives on through a play. Cambridge Dictionary says “beware the ides of March”, Shakespeare’s warning to Caesar, “is sometimes used as a warning in other situations”.

022. Who told the story, and when

Writer	When	What it is
Cicero	A letter dated to February 43 BC	Kept out of the plot; later hostile to Antony
Nicolaus of Damascus	Lived in the time of Augustus	A life of Augustus that praises him
Velleius Paterculus	Wrote in AD 30, for Vinicius’s consulship	A short history of Rome in two books
Plutarch	Lived about AD 45 to 120	Greek biographies, the Parallel Lives
Suetonius	Wrote mainly in AD 98–138, it seems	Lives of the twelve Caesars; for a time Hadrian’s secretary
Appian	Active under Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius	A history of Rome written in Greek
Cassius Dio	Born between AD 155 and 164; his history ends in AD 229	A history of Rome written in Greek
Shakespeare	A play the Folger Shakespeare Library dates to 1599	Drama, not history

The attalus.org edition of Hall’s 1923 translation calls Nicolaus’s account of the killing very valuable and almost contemporary, and his life of Augustus a work of praise. Our reading: Cicero wrote within a year, and Nicolaus lived through the period. Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and Dio lived much later. Plutarch, for one, cites the work of Livy.

033. The plot and the place

More than sixty men joined the conspiracy, led by Gaius Cassius and by Marcus and Decimus Brutus. Nicolaus puts the number higher. “They say that there were more than eighty who had a share in it,” he writes.

The senate was far bigger: Dio says Caesar had enrolled so many members that it grew to nine hundred. Our reading: this was a group inside the senate, not the senate as a body.

Plutarch says Caesar pardoned many who had fought against him, and gave honours and offices to Brutus and Cassius. Velleius adds that some of his closest friends were in the plot, naming Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius. Caesar’s will even named Decimus Brutus among his heirs in the second degree.

Suetonius says the meeting was called for the Ides of March in the Hall of Pompey. Plutarch describes a hall with a statue of Pompey, dedicated by Pompey as an addition to his theatre.

Rome’s heritage office calls it the Curia of Pompey, a large hall where the senate met from time to time. It was part of a complex Pompey built, with long porticoes and gardens leading to his theatre. Its tufa base can still be seen behind temples B and C in the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina.

044. The warnings

Our reading: the same few warnings recur across the ancient accounts.

The seer

Suetonius says the soothsayer Spurinna warned Caesar “to beware of danger, which would come not later than the Ides of March”. Plutarch tells it of an unnamed seer.

Both Plutarch and Suetonius have Caesar joke on the day that the Ides had come, and Dio tells the same exchange. The seer answered, in Plutarch’s version: “Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.”

The warning is ancient; the line is Shakespeare’s. Velleius Paterculus, writing in AD 30, says the soothsayers had warned Caesar “carefully to beware the Ides of March” (2.57.2, F. W. Shipley’s translation of ut diligentissime iduum Martiarum caveret diem).

The four-word line, spoken to Caesar by a Soothsayer, is Shakespeare’s. It comes in Act I, scene 2 of Julius Caesar: “Beware the ides of March.”

Calpurnia’s dream

Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, had a bad dream the night before. The sources tell it several ways:

• Suetonius: she dreamt that the pediment of their house fell, and that her husband was stabbed in her arms.
• Plutarch: she dreamt she was holding her murdered husband in her arms. He adds that others, citing Livy, say she saw an ornament on the house torn down.
• Appian: she saw him streaming with blood.
• Dio: their house had fallen in ruins, and her husband, wounded, had taken refuge in her arms.
• Nicolaus and Velleius say only that a dream terrified her.

Nicolaus adds that Caesar’s physicians also opposed his going, because of attacks of vertigo he was suffering at the time.

The note he did not read

Suetonius says a note revealing the plot was handed to Caesar on the way, and he kept it to read later. Plutarch names the man as Artemidorus of Cnidus, a teacher of Greek philosophy, though some said another person gave it. Velleius says notes warning him were handed to him, but he did not read them at the time.

In the end, Decimus Brutus urged him not to keep the full meeting waiting.

055. How Caesar was killed

Who kept Antony outside

The plotters did not want Mark Antony, then consul, at the killing. Someone kept him talking outside the hall. The sources name two different men.

• Plutarch’s Life of Caesar says it was Decimus Brutus.
• Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, Appian and Dio all say it was Gaius Trebonius.
• So does Cicero, writing to Trebonius himself in February 43 BC: Antony, that plague, was led aside by you and still lives thanks to you (our translation).

Our reading: the evidence leans to Trebonius, because a letter to the man himself agrees with three later accounts. Plutarch’s translator, Bernadotte Perrin, notes the slip in the Caesar. The same letter opens with Cicero wishing he had been invited to that splendid feast on the Ides of March, so that nothing would be left over (our translation).

The attack

Tillius Cimber came close as though to ask something, then caught Caesar’s toga by both shoulders. Casca struck the first blow, but the sources place it differently:

• Suetonius: just below the throat.
• Plutarch: in the neck.
• Appian: aimed at the throat, it swerved and wounded him in the breast.
• Nicolaus: on the left shoulder, a little above the collar bone.

Brutus’s own blow was in the groin, says Plutarch; in the thigh, says Appian.

Suetonius and Appian count twenty-three wounds, and Plutarch says “it is said” he received twenty-three. Nicolaus says thirty-five. Suetonius adds that the physician Antistius thought only the second wound, in the breast, was mortal.

Plutarch, Appian and Nicolaus have him fall at the foot of Pompey’s statue. Afterwards three slaves carried him home on a litter, with one arm hanging down.

His last words

The ancient writers disagree about whether he said anything once the blows began. Suetonius has him cry “Why, this is violence!” as his toga was seized.

After that, he says, Caesar died “uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke”. He goes on: “though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, ‘You too, my child?’” (J. C. Rolfe’s translation).

The Greek teknon means “child”; the “my” is the translator’s.

Cassius Dio prefers the silent version: “This is the truest account”. Plutarch has Caesar cry out in Latin at the first blow, “Accursed Casca, what does thou?” (Perrin), but gives him nothing to say to Brutus. Some writers, Plutarch says, have him pull his toga over his head when he saw Brutus’s dagger.

“Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar.” is Shakespeare’s line in Act III, scene 1 (MIT Shakespeare text). The Latin phrase was already familiar on the English stage in his day. There is more on the line in our page on famous Latin phrases.

066. After the Ides

When it was over, the other senators rushed out of doors and fled. The senate then voted Caesar divine honours, kept his measures in force, and gave Brutus and his allies provinces. Antony himself spoke in favour of an amnesty, says Plutarch.

The funeral speech

The sources disagree on how much Antony said at the funeral.

• Suetonius: “instead of a eulogy” a herald read out the senate’s decrees and oath, to which Antony “added a very few words of his own”.
• Plutarch: Antony “pronounced the customary eulogy” and shook the dead man’s bloody garments.
• Appian: a long funeral speech, in which Antony reads the decrees with comments, then lifts the robe on a spear.
• Dio: a long, ornate speech, which he calls out of place on that occasion and then writes out in his own version, “somewhat as follows”.
• Cicero, attacking Antony in his Second Philippic: “that fine eulogy of yours, your pity, your incitement” (our translation).

Our reading: they agree Antony spoke, and disagree on how long. Suetonius and Plutarch agree the crowd burned the body in the Forum.

Of the accounts on this page, only Appian describes a wax figure of Caesar turned round to show the twenty-three wounds. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” is Antony’s line in Shakespeare’s play, Act III, scene 2.

A day with a new name

Three sources describe what became of the day and the hall.

• Suetonius: it was voted to wall up the hall, call the Ides of March the Day of Parricide, and never meet as a senate that day.
• Dio: the senate had always held a regular meeting on that day, and it was now made an unlucky day.
• Rome’s heritage office: Pompey’s statue was moved, and Augustus declared the hall an accursed place and sealed it with a wall.

Suetonius notes that hardly any of the assassins survived Caesar by more than three years. In his will Caesar adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavius. Octavius later took the title Augustus and is counted as the first of the Roman emperors.

077. Five things often said about the Ides

Partly “The Ides is the 15th.” The Ides fell on the 15th only in March, May, July and October, and on the 13th in the other months.

Partly “A seer told Caesar to beware the Ides of March.” Suetonius names the seer as Spurinna, and Velleius already has a warning to beware the Ides. The four famous words are Shakespeare’s.

Doesn't hold up “Caesar was killed at the Capitol.” The ancient writers put the killing in Pompey’s hall, and have the killers march to the Capitol afterwards. That is where Shakespeare’s plotters plan to bring him. As the killing scene opens, Cassius says “Come to the Capitol.” Modern editions head that scene “Before the Capitol”, but the 1623 Folio names no place there, so that heading is an editor’s. Even in the play, Antony says Caesar fell “at the base of Pompey’s statua”.

Doesn't hold up “His last words were ‘Et tu, Brute?’” No ancient source gives Caesar these words. The closest is the Greek “You too, child?”, which Suetonius and Dio report only as something some people wrote.

Doesn't hold up “The Ides of March was already an unlucky day.” As Dio says, it was the murder that made it unlucky. In Macrobius, every Ides belonged to Jupiter. He does add that Romans avoided weddings on the Kalends, Nones and Ides of every month (our translation), a rule for all of them, not a mark against this one.

088. How to use this

The Ides is a good test case for any famous story.

• Ask who is telling it, and when. Here most of the accounts come from men who lived long after the killing.
• Count the versions before picking one. Calpurnia’s dream has five, the wounds two counts, and Antony’s funeral speech five.
• Watch for the playwright’s words. The best-known lines come from Shakespeare’s play, written more than sixteen centuries later.

For Caesar’s life as a whole, see our summary of his rise and fall. For other lines credited to Caesar, see our page on Julius Caesar quotes; for lines credited to other famous people, see Did They Really Say That?.

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• We read Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, Dio and Velleius in the Loeb translations at LacusCurtius, Nicolaus in C. M. Hall's translation, and Cicero and Macrobius in Latin.
• Translations of Cicero, Macrobius and Velleius's Latin are ours, and the page says so each time.
• Where the sources disagree, as on the number of plotters, the wounds and the funeral speech, we give each version and who gives it.
• We did not give a calendar date for the senate's amnesty meeting. Cicero says only that he came to the temple of Tellus on the third day.
• We left out claims about the exact spot of the killing inside the hall, because we could not find a published study behind them.
• The wording on Caesar's last words and on the Soothsayer's line matches our pages on famous Latin phrases and Did They Really Say That.

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