Ides of March 2027 is on Monday

About Ides of March

The Romans did not number the days of a month from one upward. They counted backward from three markers: the Kalends on the 1st, the Nones and the Ides. In March, May, July and October the Nones fell on the 7th and the Ides on the 15th; in the other months they fell on the 5th and 13th. The Ides was originally tied to the full moon of the old lunar calendar, and in Roman religion the Ides of each month belonged to Jupiter.

The date became famous in 44 BC. Julius Caesar, by then dictator, was killed at a meeting of the Senate held in a hall attached to the Theatre of Pompey. The Roman biographer Suetonius wrote that more than sixty men joined the plot, led by Gaius Cassius and Marcus and Decimus Brutus, and that Caesar received 23 stab wounds. Both Suetonius and Plutarch tell of a seer who had warned Caesar about the Ides; Plutarch says Caesar joked on the way to the Senate that the day had come, and the seer replied that it had not yet gone. Afterward, according to Suetonius, the Senate renamed the day the Day of Parricide and banned meetings on it.

The murder did not save the Republic. It set off years of civil war that ended with Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian, ruling alone as Augustus. William Shakespeare later put the seer's warning on stage in Julius Caesar, and the line "Beware the ides of March" made the date a lasting shorthand for looming trouble.

In Rome, the Gruppo Storico Romano stages a reenactment of the assassination each March 15 in the Sacred Area of Largo di Torre Argentina, where the remains of Pompey's Curia lie. Rome's official tourism site listed the 2026 event as the 23rd edition. The Ides of March is not a holiday anywhere; it is a historical anniversary.

Sources: Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar (Loeb translation, LacusCurtius, University of Chicago), Plutarch, Life of Caesar (Loeb translation, LacusCurtius, University of Chicago), Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities: Calendarium (LacusCurtius), Turismo Roma: Ides of March 2026. How we check dates.

How to mark Ides of March

• Read the accounts of Caesar's death by Suetonius and Plutarch, both available free online in English translation, and compare how they tell it.
• Read or watch Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, or just Act 3, where the assassination and the funeral speeches happen.
• If you are in Rome, attend the March 15 reenactment at Largo di Torre Argentina or visit the ruins of the Sacred Area.
• Learn how the Roman calendar worked by working out a date in Kalends, Nones and Ides, then explain it to a student or friend.
• Watch a documentary or lecture on the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus.

Ides of March dates