The Ides of March

The Ides of March.

It all happened on the Ides of March - history glorified Caesar, through well-deserved murder, made into martyrdom. Sweet Julio, cut from his Mother’s womb, so long ago. Whatever happened to her I wonder? Does history record? Perhaps he should have been left stillborn.

Knives in the back, a fitting end for one who fed the masses,  the vanquished Celtic Queens and Kings in his Triumphal Marches - Proud men and women who fought the Roman way,  were food for the captured lions. The lions, later  also slaughtered, trodden under the feet of terrified elephants, all survivors dutifully speared by desperate gladiators - who thereby lived a day longer.

Ah! Sweet Julio, the vine who wound himself around the proud heart of the true Queen Cleopatra, the only one of the Ptolemies to go native; Cleopatra, who traded love and body to save her beloved land - a land older than time, a way of living alien to the rigid plodding and barbarous Roman way, that we still live by at a respectable distance.

Jules, the boy, grown man, self deifying in his own mirror, the wreath of ivy placed upon his own human head... a God! Like Charlamagne, who charged and stormed and murdered; like Henry and Elizabeth Tudor; like Cromwell and like the frog- mouthed Hanovarian Georges, “Begone Stuarts, descendants of the Bruces and Holy Way.


Julio, the patrician butcher, of sucked in cheeks and dripping sword, held always in someone else’s hand. As with mushy faced Victoria, Boer blood on her doughy jowls; as Adolph - they had the same eyes - who dabbled in the spiritual and never learned the most basic of  spiritual laws, of ‘reaping what you sow’.  Lenin, Stalin Mao and Bush, “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa - forgive us for we knew exactly what we did but we did it anyway”.  Lest we forget Panama, Grenada, and Iraq.

It all happened on the Ides of a March so long ago, that Thatcher should have known better, and also Gough and Malcolm, red cheeked after sipping quality scotch, with Malcolm keeping his belt tightly on his trousers, because of past mistakes, both hoping no one would notice that little problem of East Timor and how they slipped so smoothly between the silky sheets of the bed of Soeharto’s Indonesian trade…lest we forget…we forgot… till it all smacked us in the chops, and we could no longer pretend.

Heroes all! Not Julius’ mother who suffered hard the knife to bear him - but Julio’s deeds are deified instead, deeds of blood, power and evil. Cleopatra, his whore, the scarlet woman, whose country fed the Roman empire fat, with grain, who spoke fourteen languages proficiently, and cried bitter tears as her vast Alexandrian library of ancient ways and learning was burning. Cleopatra who vomited to bile, whilst forced to watch Julie’s Roman debauchery. She knew her place. Who was the real whore then?

Roll on the Ides of March!

Diana the fine and comely huntress, strides across the frame of history, in protective gear, in case of landmines, a Bruce descendant, from the Celtic way - a Queen of our hearts, not of the Roman way. The flag hung low - authorised by Elizabeth Windsor, previously Saxe- Coburg Gotha, who, shocked cold by waves of public grieving was persuaded it was good for public relations and she’d better get her finger out and show some response. Not to think that family relations meant anything at all.

True Lady of the Lake, of Avalon, of Tir na Nogue, of time before - an idea whose time has come -  Diana’s line - that Hadrian that lesser God, built his wall to keep out; what cannot be subdued, must be walled up, walled out , walled in or walled over - ignored...beyond Julio’s fist.

“Watch your back Julius”, his fading wide advised - was it a dream she had... or had someone told her as Jules slept the satisfied sleep of adulterer, butcher and God?

“Beware the Ides of March”, the truth will out, for some... and while Roman roads are effective for moving troops, collecting taxes, and transporting people and filched treasures, the roads they covered, the faery roads of Celtic ways, are forcing their determined way up between the cracks of Julian eugenics.

“Et tu Brutus!” he exclaimed in surprise; one wonders why. Did he think to die an old man in a bed tended by a grieving wife?

A wife, now free, to hold up her head - Julius Caesar’s widow - to lie alone in bed as usual and dream, as women do.

“Beware the Ides of March”, Julio, ‘All the way with LBJ’ Soeharto, Bush, and Pinochet.  The sad broken dreams of motherless and fatherless children, cry out down through the centuries of Julian evil, for the milk for their survival and love and place of family. Their arms reach for the hearth of home, the arms of comfort and the gentleness of their mother’s humming. You can’t take your power with you, Julius, Torquemanda, Popes, Czars, Monarchs, Kings and Prime Ministers, innumerable, ...there are no Gods in heaven - just one - the one of truth.

It all happened on the Ides of March, and was no big deal at all.

Therese Mackay   - The Ides of March - 2000