March 15, 44 B.C.: Julius Caesar is assassinated by the super-hero teamgroup of senators called The Liberators.
Where why:
Romans used to have a king, just like everybody else.
Then they got rid of him and proclaimed themselves a Republic. In fact, that’s where we get the word "republic" from: res publica, which is Latin for "the public thing"–the body that governed Rome after they kicked out the last king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus ("Tarquin the Proud," no relation to Grand Moff Tarkin).
Tarquin the Proud got kicked out both because he was a big jerk and because he had an immoral son who raped a noblewoman named Lucretia (hence the famous "rape of Lucretia"). Lucretia got revenge by summong the menfolk of her family, telling them what happened, and killing herself. They then took revenge on her behalf by driving the Tarquin house into exile and, subsequently, proclaiming a republic.
Or so the story goes.
The Roman Republic didn’t go swimmingly, though. Its first head was a guy named Lucius Junius Brutus who was, well, "the Lucius Junius Brutus of his race" (a quote from The Mikado) who executed two of his own sons! He didn’t execute all his offspring, though, because one of his descendants, almost five centuries later, was Marcus Junius Brutus.
Marcus Junius Brutus was particular dissatisfied with the events of his own day.
The Republic had proven itself ineffectual in governing (though, one must concede, it had a good run of a number of centuries) and some centralization of power was needed. Having thrown off the shackles of having a king, though, the Romans were not only proud of that fact, they were smug about it. So no king for them. It was a point of honor. (And they were justly afraid about what a king would do.) So they didn’t want to centralize power in the person of just one man.
Instead three guys began unofficially to assume supreme power, and these three guys were known as The Triumvirate (which is based on the Latin for "The Three Guys": trium viri–or, more literally, "the Men of the Three").
That honked a bunch of people off, but what honked even more off was that the Triumvirate proved unstable, with two of the triumviri trying to seize personal power and one kind of sitting out the fight.
The Triumvir who won was none other than Gaius Julius Caesar. He never became emperor (that title went to his successor), but he did get named "dictator for life." (Kewl, huh?)
Well, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for ol’ Marcus Junius Brutus. He was descended from that guy who executed his own sons, ‘member? And that being the case, killing a cousin like Julius Caesar would be no sweat at all for such as him.
So that’s what he did: He and his Liberator buddies all thought Julius needed killin’, and so when Julius strides in, they stab him! And then they go and stab him twenty-two more times! Just to make sure he’s good an’ dead!
And they did all this on March 15, or the Ides of March (WHAT "IDES" ARE), which history (not just Shakespeare) records Julius as having been warned about by a fortuneteller.
And so they got the Republic back and avoided having a nasty ol’ king.
Well . . . not.
The Republic collapsed into Civil War and eventually there emerged a Second Triumvirate, which proved no more stable than the first and which had two of the triumviri trying to be king and one eventually got his wish, except that the Romans couldn’t bear to call him "king" so they called him "emperor" instead.
Romans, y’see, could have kings as long as they didn’t call them that.
Kinder the way America might one day (certainly not now) have an empire, only we would never be able to call it that.
Countries are funny like that.
Ain’t ancient history a hoot?
Oh, and Julius did apparently die saying something pretty close to "Et tu, Brute" or "Even you, Brutus?"
LEARN MORE THE LAST WORDS OF GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.
ALSO LEARN ABOUT HOW GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR’S NAME WORKS.
Geez, I’m a big fat idiot.
One of the major characters in both the movie and the book Nochnoi Dozor (Night Watch) is the head of the Moscow Night Watch. (That’s the magical police/peacekeeping force fielded by the good guy magical beings. The baddies run the Day Watch, which keeps an eye on good guys to make sure they’re not breaking the law and the Truce. This is the kind of urban fantasy where vampires get issued hunting licenses by the state, and are even assigned their Muggle victims by the same kind of system we use for jury duty. It’s a fun action movie, but the background is just a tad dark.)
In some ways, he’s a great boss: tough, motivated, caring. In other ways, he’s a pain in the butt — so tough and motivated that he can and will do anything necessary to win. Which is bad for you, if the boss thinks he needs to use you in one of his plans. He will use you however he thinks necessary, and he won’t ask you first or fill you in. He’ll be sorry afterward; but he definitely believes in getting forgiveness instead of permission.
The DVD puts it right on the box and the movie uses it constantly, but the book is rather coy about the boss’ last name. For the whole first section (the part this movie is based on), he’s only referred to as “Boris Ignat’yevich”. Only the second part reveals, with much fanfare, that the boss’ last name is “Geser”.
This kept bothering me, especially as Anton (our protagonist, who’s literally a cop computer wizard) was very impressed by it. I knew it sounded familiar. But why? And why the heck did Anton think he’d been in Tibet?
Then I followed your Wikipedia link. How could I have forgotten “Geser of Rum”? And boy, does this explain why the boss’ head is not so much pointy as Romanly pumpkin-like. This also has ominous implications for the true identity of his old girlfriend Olga….
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19488
Review of the version coming to the US
http://www.foxsearchlight.com/nwnd/
American distributor site — not much there yet
http://www.dozorfilm.ru/
Official Russian site with all sorts of stuff,
including trailers in Russian
http://www.russiandvd.com
Where I bought my perfectly official Region 1 DVD last summer!
Uh… Is the above comment some kind of cleverly-disguised comment spam?
Hey Jimmy,
I’ve got to call you on saying that Marcus Junius Brutus was a descendant of Lucius Junius Brutus.
Many historians of ancient Rome question that descent nowadays. The biggest problem (besides essentially non-existent genealogical records) is that Lucius was a patrician whereas Marcus was a pleb, albeit of the plebian nobility.
–arthur
Hey, you left out that the first Brutus executed his own sons. It was either treason against the republic–conspiring to bring back the monarchy, or dereliction of military duties, I forget which.
Er. “the reason that” the first Brutus, etc.
Arthur: I was under the impression that the problem was generally understood the other way around – that because all the later Iunii (including Marcus Brutus) were plebeians, scholars question whether L. Iunius Brutus had actually been a patrician. It just seems strange that, if the Iunii had been a patrician family at the beginning of the Republic, there were (as far as I can tell) only plebeian Iunii around at the end of the Republic. In any event, Marcus Brutus and his contemporaries certainly *thought* that L. Iunius was his ancestor.
(This is, of course, assuming that L. Iunius Brutus actually existed. But that’s a whole other issue…)
Mr. Jones: It was for conspiring to restore the Tarquins. On killing one’s son for disobeying military orders, perhaps you were thinking of Titus Manlius Torquatus?
And I still think the best part of the story is when, as Caesar was on his way into the Senate on the Ides, he mocked the soothsayer, saying “the Ides of March are come.” To which the soothsayer replied “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.”
No. I’m just very fangirly about Nochnoi Dozor.
(And “who is Geser?” has been bothering me since last August. Look, if I’m fangirl enough to buy the flippin’ books _in Russian_, and write out an entire _novella and a half_ of translation _for myself_ before being relieved to find out the books are in fact going to come out in English, I’m bound to be just a _tad_ excited about finally figuring out one of the more important folklore references.)
Sorry for boring those of you who are not so fannish as to have gone over the edge. I’ll try to hold my fangirling down to a dull roar!
Maureen, probably also stupid enough to finish translating the first novel, because the suspense is demonstrably driving her nuts.
Christopher: I’ll grant you that M. Brutus probably thought he was descended from L. Brutus and that was one of the reasons he joined the Assassins.
But assuming the L. Brutus existed (and yes, that’s a pretty big assume) he had to be patrician because under the constitution of the very early Republic only patricians could hold any sort of office.
Christopher: I’ll grant you that M. Brutus probably thought he was descended from L. Brutus and that was one of the reasons he joined the Assassins.
But assuming the L. Brutus existed (and yes, that’s a pretty big assume) he had to be patrician because under the constitution of the very early Republic only patricians could hold any sort of office.
I was listening to a news blurbette from ABC on the way to work about the Ides of March. After explaining the meaning of the Ides of March, the report ended up with the announcer saying “Et tu, brutus”. That’s right, he used the nominative instead of the vocative. Unbelievable. I think the news editor must have had the day off.
I was listening to a news blurbette from ABC on the way to work about the Ides of March. After explaining the meaning of the Ides of March, the report ended up with the announcer saying “Et tu, brutus”. That’s right, he used the nominative instead of the vocative. Unbelievable. I think the news editor must have had the day off.
I’ve been told (however reliably!) that there were ancient rumors that Bad Brutus was possibly Julius’ bend sinister offspring, thus adding another twist to the tale…
That rumor doesn’t hold water SouthCoast. While Caesar apparently did have an affair with Brutus’ mother Servilia, best evidence places it when Brutus was already a teen.
Arthur: True, as far as our historical sources relate. But I have seen the later plebeian status of the Iunii used as evidence either (1) that L. Iunius Brutus did not actually hold the consulship, and his political status is inflated in our (much later) sources or (2) that the consulship was open to plebeians much earlier than our sources attest. Of these explanations, I find (2) more likely. The historians of the late Republic assume that it was necessary from the start to be a patrician in order to hold a magistracy, but the Fasti Consulares suggest that in the earliest decades of the Republic not all the consuls were patricians, and that the patrician monopoly only developed during the 5th century BC (and was in turn challenged by the plebs in the 4th).
On the other hand I looked into it a (very little) bit, and it was apparently possible for clans which were clearly patrician early on to develop plebeian branches later: the common example of this is the plebeian Claudii Marcelli. How this is supposed to have happened, I do not know, but it seems to be a widely acknowledged phenomenon. This may make the plebeian status of Marcus Brutus a moot point.
Those of you with way, way too much time on your hands may want to hop over to my blog (linked below), where I have been hot on the mystery question, “What, if anything, did Caesar really say to Brutus?”
It certainly doesn’t look as if it was “Et tu, Brute?” (so the ABC announcer would have been wrong historically even if he’d used the vocative).
sigh
Executive office furniture.
Executive home office furniture. Antigua executive office furniture. Executive office furniture.
Buy tramadol.
Free blog hosting from tramadol anothervision info. Cheap tramadol cheap tramadol cheap tramadol. Cheapest tramadol. Buy tramadol online best prices limited time off.