Beware the Ides of March!

This was the wonderful gift that an unknown Secret Santa gifted to me several months ago:

 

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I think many of us break our own budget rules in acquiring a lifetime Caesar. I certainly did!


The elephants are getting pricey too.


Thankfully the Nutella restoration issue is still affordable.

 

CAESAR, Life of a Colossus, Adrian Goldsworthy, Yale University Press, 2006.

I added this title to my library last year and it is now my favorite Julius Caesar book. It is an easy and enjoyable read for me. I especially like Chapter 23 - The Ides of March - which, to me, is a particularly good encapsulation of the events of that historic day.

 

Happy stabbing day. Make sure to sharpen your dull knives.

 

Excellent portrait! Unfortunately I don't have a Julius Caesar portrait but I do have one of his elephant denarii and a denarius of Cassius:

 

Happy Ides.

A lifetime portrait is on my short list but it's going to be a while. In the meantime the prices keep going up. This is what my meager coin budget has let me get.

 

Great coin postings everyone. @gsimonel and @Alegandron - spectacular coins indeed!

 

Julius Caesar, Wm. Shakespeare, Act I, Scene II

BRUTUS:
Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honours that are heap’d on Caesar.

CASSIUS:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

 

Great S ... Macer lifetime portrait coin @Severus Alexander!

 

And of course, Mark Anthony's famous speach:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.