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VIEW FROM MARS HILL

View from Mars Hill: The astronomy behind Shakespeare's Ides of March

La morte di Cesare

The assassination of Julius Caesar, led by Brutus, by the Senate. Painted by

At some point over the next couple of weeks, many of us will hear, if not ourselves utter, the phrase, “Beware the Ides of March.� And it will come with some level of disquietude.

While any phrase that begins with the word “beware� is likely to engender such an emotion, this one famously derives a forebodingness from the creative mind of Stratford-upon-Avon’s (England) favorite son, William Shakespeare. In actuality, the Ides of March trace back to innocuous, common astronomical phenomena, but their bad rap persists thanks to the Bard of Avon.





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