Greetings Picklesversians,
The observant among you will have noticed that today is no ordinary day. Some call it ‘November 13th’ (yawn), but I prefer its Roman name…
Today, of course, is the Ides of November.
Since writing Beware the Ides of April, I’ve been grappling with a nasty case of ide-itis, an affliction of the brain where a person develops an intense fascination with obscure or outmoded methods of marking the passage of time.
There’s no known cure. As such, I need to make you aware of two symptoms which are going to have an impact on you:
1. This November edition of the Picklesverse is dedicated to the topic of the Ides.
2. Yeah… I’ll circle back to symptom two later on.
So, what the heck are the Ides anyway? Well, as Ben tells Charlotte in Beware the Ides of April, the term comes from the Roman calendar and was related to the phases of the moon. The word Ides comes from the Latin idus, which in turn is said to derive from an Etruscan word meaning to divide. The division part makes sense because the Ides fall half way through each month.
And the Etruscan connection is especially cool considering Etruscan was a non Indo-European language. As a ‘language isolate’ it’s believed to have developed independently of other languages. With no known linguistic relatives, translating it presents significant challenges and surviving Etruscan texts remain undeciphered to this day. If that’s not a reason to re-popularise the Ides, I don’t know what is.
Some people think it’s tricky to keep track of the Ides because they can fall either on the 13th or the 15th. But in reality, figuring out the right date is super easy. All you have to do is count eight days after the Nones of each month. Piece of cake. 🍰
What do you mean that’s not clear?
Oh, fine. I’ll explain…
So, the Romans used three major markers as part of their lunar calendar to help them figure out when was when.
The Kalends was the first of each month. There was a new moon on the Kalends. (Not a brand new one, you understand… although that gives me an idea for a sci-fi story.) Apparently, debts were often paid on the Kalends (so I guess that must have been the default option when Romans used to set up their direct debits).
The Nones was either five or seven days after the Kalends. The faffing around with different numbers of days was an attempt to align the lunar calendar with the solar calendar. But Julius Caesar reformed things in 45 BCE, when he introduced the humbly named Julian calendar, jettisoning the moon altogether. (Again, not literally, but that would make another fun novel.)
Interestingly, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March the very next year. Was it really due to complex political factors… or was there a secret faction of lunar calendar enthusiasts who conspired to bring him down. (It was the former, but maybe I could… nah, I’ll leave that one for Dan Brown.)
Is any of this calendar talk interesting or relevant?
I think so!
Time is fundamental to the human experience. We tend to think of it as something fixed. We can measure it accurately with atomic clocks, and the Gregorian calendar lets us track our days and months from one year to the next. We organise our lives around the premise that time is consistent.
But we also know that time is sneaky. It flies when we’re having fun. It drags when we’re reading boring emails about obscure historical facts. As living beings, we move through time… always in one direction. But the feeling of time varies according to our experiences.
I like the concept of the Ides because it’s a reminder that there isn’t only one way of measuring or experiencing time.
Which brings me neatly to symptom two of my ide-itis.
2. These Picklesverse emails are moving to a consistent monthly format (instead of the whenever-I-feel-like-it model I’ve been following until now). You’ll be pleased to hear that from now on you’re going to be receiving these on the Ides of each month. (Yes, really.)
So if you’ve been having trouble keeping track of whether the Ides falls on the 13th or the 15th, my emails should help you out.
You’re welcome.
Speak again on the Ides of December if not before.
Marianne
PS. If you’ve read Beware the Ides of April, I’d love to hear what you thought of it. Thanks to all of you who’ve been in touch already. If you haven’t yet, just hit reply and let me know.
