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‘Beware the Ides of March!’: an astrological prediction?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John T. Ramsey
John T. Ramsey
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Extract

This paper will examine the circumstances that inspired the famous utterance attributed to the haruspex Spurinna, ‘Beware the Ides of March!'1 Recently the argument has been made that this warning to Caesar was based upon an astrological calculation, rather than on the usual arts of an haruspex who read signs of the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals (exta) or by interpreting bolts of lightning (fulgura) and portents (ostenta). As intriguing as this astrological theory is, I am convinced that it is fatally flawed, and I intend to show why it must ultimately be rejected. The question is not merely an academic one, having to do with the methods employed by a particular seer on a given occasion. Rather, if it can be established as even probable that Spurinna based his prophecy upon an astrological calculation, which helped convince the conspirators that Caesar was vulnerable to attack on the Ides as being an unlucky day for him according to the stars, then we are presented with a very significant and hitherto unsuspected instance of astrology influencing the course of public affairs at Rome several decades before astrology came into its own under the early emperors. According to such a reconstruction, astrology played a key role in determining the date of one of the most fateful murders in Roman history. It is the contention of this paper, on the contrary, that there is no reason whatsoever to attribute Spurinna's prophecy to an astrological calculation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 440 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

1 Very little is known about Spurinna, apart from the fact that his name is Etruscan (Schulze, W., Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen [Berlin, 1933], 65, 94–5Google Scholar ), and that he was a very distinguished practitioner of the Etruscan art of haruspicy, perhaps even being the chief haruspex, if he is the figure whom Cicero (Div. 2.52) describes as the summus haruspex (see below, n. 60). C. Thulin, ‘Haruspices’, RE 7.2 (1912), 2434, cites Cic. Fam. 6.18.1 as evidence that Spurinna was made a senator by Caesar, but the passage is too general to warrant this conclusion. Spurinna's fame rests on the tradition that he successfully predicted Caesar's murder on the Ides of March:Münzer, F., ‘Spurinna (2)’, RE 3A.2 (1929), 1888.Google Scholar

2 Molnar, M., Astrological omens commemorated on Roman coins: the Ides of March’, The Celator 8.11 (1994), 6–9Google Scholar, building upon a conclusion drawn by Cramer, F., Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (Philadelphia, 1954), 77.Google Scholar For the threefold division of the Etruscan discipline of haruspicy alluded to above (the extispex, fulgurator, and interpres oslentorum), see Cic, Div. 2.109, with the note ad loc. of Arthur Stanley Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Divinatione (Urbana, 1920–3), 527.

3 Augustus, for instance, published his horoscope and issued coins depicting his natal sign Capricorn (Suet. Aug. 94.12), while this successor Tiberius kept the astrologer Thrasyllus on his staff and treated him as a close advisor and confidant (Suet. Tib. 14.4; Tac. Arm. 6.21).

4 Cramer (n. 2), 77.

5 Molnar (n. 2), 6–7.

6 For example, haruspices (μντεις) declared unfavourable the sacrifices performed by Caesar on the Ides of March, before he entered the meeting of the Senate where he was murdered (Nic. Dam. Vit. Caes. 24.86).

7 Even in antiquity, however, this version of the prophecy, which singled out the Ides as the sole day of danger, was also known: e.g. Veil. Pat. 2.57.2 haruspices praemonuerant ut diligentissime Iduum Martiarum caueret diem; Plut. Caes. 63.5 αὐτῳ μντις ρᾳ μαρτου μηνς, ν εἰδος ‘ρωμαῖοι καλοσι, προεποι μβαν φυλττεσθαι κνσυνον; cf. App. B.Civ. 2.153.

8 To take another example, in 65 B.C. haruspices warned that the year 63 was fated to be bloody as a result of civil war unless heaven could be appeased (Cic. Cat. 3.19–21, Div. 2.45–6; Sail. Cat. 47.2; Dio 37.9.1–2),

9 A. Bouche-Leclercq, V Astrologie grecque (Paris, 1899), 550.

10 OCD, s.v. ‘astrology’ and ‘haruspices’.

11 It was not until the age of Sulla that astrology is attested as having any appreciable influence on public figures in Rome: E. Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985), 307.

12 Plut. Rom. 12; cf. Cic. Div. 2.98. For a discussion, see A. Grafton and N. Swerdlow, CQ 35 (1985), 454–65 and CP 81 (1986), 148–53.

13 Schulze(n. 1), 241.

14 Suet. Aug. 94.5; Dio 45.1.3–5. Jerome (Hieron. Euseb. Chron. p. 156 ed. Helm) styles Nigidius 'Pythagoricus et magus' (cf. Cic. Tim. 1 and Schol. Bob. ad Vat. 14, p. 146 ed. Stangl, for Nigidius’ reputation as a Neo-Pythagorean).

15 Fr. 81 Swoboda (preserved by Gell. 16.6.12 and Macrob. Sat. 6.9.5, cf. Nonius 53.23). E. Rawson, JRS 68 (1978), 138, goes so far as to characterize him as ‘an expert in the disciplina Etrusca', stating that ‘arguments for Etruscan origin remain tempting’. However, elsewhere Rawson herself (n. 11), 128, n. 49, makes the point that the extant fragments of Nigidius’ grammatical works reveal no trace of a knowledge of Etruscan, and there is nothing Etruscan in the Greek adaptation of a Tonitruale attributed to Nigidius by John Lydus (De ost. 27–38): see W. Kroll, ‘Nigidius', RE 17.1 (1936), 208.

16 Firmicus, Mathesis 7.23.1:Si Saturnus Solem quadrata out diametra radiatione respexerit, biothanati nascuntur, cf. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 3.10.

17 For the coins, see S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971), 377; 81–2 on the temple and 88–90 on the games.

18 Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.6: when the planets are too near the Sun to be visible (ὑπ τς αὐγς ντες) ‘they experience a lessening of their astral effects’ (νεσιν τν ποτελουμνων ποιοσιν).

19 Calculations here and below (n. 22) were made by using SkyClock, an electronic ephemeris compiled by the late Pierre Brind'Amour.

20 Firmicus, Mathesis 2.9.1: 8° of separation from the Sun cause Venus to be either a morning or evening star; cf. Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 3.10.

21 Val. Max. 8.11.2 is the earliest extant source to relate the anecdote involving the repartee between Caesar and Spurinna on the Ides. The tale is also told by Suet. Iul. 81.4, and without naming Spurinna, by Plut. Caes. 63.2; Dio 44.18.4; and App. B.Civ. 2.149, 153.

22 Molnar (n. 2), 8–9, grossly underestimates the length of time required for this to have occurred, putting it ‘a few weeks later’. The actual date of Venus’ heliacal rising, following the Ides of March 44 B.C., was approximately 15 May, when at sunset in Rome (19:06 LMT) the true longitude of the Sun was 51° 27’, and the geocentric longitude of Venus was 59° 42.

23 Unfortunately, we cannot say whether 45 or 44 or 43 was a leap year in the new Julian calendar—all three being potential candidates. What we do know is (i) that two of the first five years of Julius Caesar's reformed calendar (45–41 B.c.) contained an intercalary day; and (ii) that on the basis of Dio (48.33.4), one of those two years was 41 B.C: see T. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar (Oxford, 1907), 715, 717–23, summarizing the arguments for and against intercalation in 44.1 thank John D. Morgan for discussing with me by e-mail the current state of this thorny question.

24 The same account of the sacrifice and trappings of Caesar is given by both Val. Max. 1.6.13 and Pliny, N.H. 11.186, but whereas Valerius includes the detail of Spurinna's warning about the danger threatening Caesar's consilium and vita, Pliny mentions neither Spurinna nor his prophecy. Both doubtless go back in one way or another to Cicero (so Weinstock [n. 17], 344, n. 11). D. Wardle notes in his commentary o n Book 1 of Val. Max. (Oxford, 1998), 210 that Val. Max. has recast the story to glorify Caesar.

25 Weinstock (n. 17), 345 interprets consilium as an allusion to Caesar's plan to have Antony offer him the diadem, which suits a date no later than 15 February since afterwards Caesar seems to have abandoned the intention of having himself crowned. Rawson (n. 15), 143 tentatively draws the same conclusion.

26 Weinstock (n. 17), 331 and Rawson (n. 15), 143 without hesitation assign the first display of these emblems of power to the Lupercalia.

27 Matzat, H., Romische Chronologie 1 (Berlin, 1883), 11–18.Google Scholar

28 So Meyer, E., Caesars Monarchic (Stuttgart, 1922), 526Google Scholar, n. 2, speculating that Caesar may have resigned his fourth dictatorship and assumed his new office as ‘dictator for life’ on 14 February, taking that occasion to wear the purple robe and sit upon the gilded chair for the first time.Wilcken, U., Abh. Akad. Berlin. 1 (1940), 24Google Scholar, n. 4 accepts Meyer's conclusion, but Hohl, E., Klio 34 (1942), 110–12Google Scholar is rightly sceptical about singling out 14 February since all we know for certain is that Caesar was still dictator IV on 26 Jan. at the Feriae Latinae (CIL I2 p. 50) and dictatorperpetuus on 15 Feb. (Cic. Phil. 2.87).

29 For example, on the day of the murder of the emperor Pertinax (SHA Pert. 11.2–3), and without reference to a particular occasion (Pliny, N.H. 28.11; Iambi. Myst. 3.16).

30 Auspicia were classified as ‘deadly'(pestifera) when the heart was missing from the entrails, or the lobe (caput) from the liver:pestifera auspicia esse dicebant cum cor in extis aut caput in iocinore nonfuisset (Paul, ex Fest. p. 244M).

31 Cicero (Div. 2.37) opts for the latter explanation, arguing that no living creature can survive without a heart but that an animal might sustain life with a diseased and shrivelled one. Rawson (n. 15), 143 points out that if Spurinna tried to spirit away the cor, he would have required, at the very least, the co-operation of his assistant, the uictimarius.

32 At least the elections to fill the consulships for 43 and 42 are placed after the Lupercalia by Nicolaus of Damascus (Vit. Caes. 22.77), and this chronology suits the story told about the write-in candidacies of the deposed tribunes C. Epidius Marullus and L. Caesetius Flavus (Suet. Iul. 80.3; Dio 44.11.4), who were recalled from exile shortly after the Lupercalia on the motion of the praetor L. Cornelius Cinna (Nic. Dam. Vit. Caes. 22.76). Dio (43.51.2–4), by contrast, puts the consular elections well ahead of his account of the Lupercalia, but as A. Lintott has recently demonstrated (ANRW2M3.25Q2-X 1), Dio does not observe a strict chronological arrangement of events in his account of the late Roman Republic. (I thank the referee for CQ for drawing my attention to Lintott's paper.) The issue is further complicated, however, by Suetonius’ assertion (Iul. 80.4) that the conspirators intended to assassinate Caesar when he was ‘summoning the tribes' (not centuries, which would be the voting units at the consular elections). Conceivably, therefore, the scene of the aborted plot was the election of curule aediles for 43, an assembly that may, or may not, have been summoned at the time of the consular comitia: see N. Horsfall, G&R 21 (1974), 193 and n. 2.

33 Whether a trinundinum is to be reckoned as a fixed period of twenty-four or twenty-five days (Mommsen, Rom. Staatsr. 3.13 375–7 and A. K. Michels, The Calendar of the Roman Republic [Princeton, 1967], 194–206, respectively), or a flexible period containing three nundinae ('market days', held every eight days) and so requiring a minimum of eighteen days to elapse (A. W. Lintott, CQ 15 [1965], 281–5 and CQ 18 [1968], 189–94), even by the shortest of these two reckonings (eighteen days), an assembly convened during either of the two weeks following the Lupercalia (and even as late as the first few days of March) would have to have been announced before 15 February.

34 Caesar was expected to be away for three years (Dio 43.51.2) and had arranged in advance for all offices to be filled in 43 and consuls and tribunes to be picked for 42 (Dio 43.51.6).

35 He had relinquished his Spanish bodyguard at the end of 45, it seems, when the Senate voted to take an oath to protect Caesar's person (Suet. Iul. 86.1; cf. Nic. Dam. Vit. Caes. 22.80; App. B. Civ. 2.107; and Dio 44.7.4). The unpopularity that Caesar had aroused in late January by removing from office the tribunes Caesetius and Marullus raised the possibility that he might reconstitute his Spanish guard as a precautionary measure, but in the end he decided against this course of action (App. B. Civ. 2.109).

36 See Horsfall (n. 32), 194 for a good review of the factors that influenced the conspirators to select the meeting of the Senate on the Ides as the ideal occasion for assassinating Caesar.

37 Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. 3.23 917 and n. 3.

38 MRR 2.638–39. To the five attested meetings on 15 March in the late third and early second centuries listed by Michels (n. 33), 55, add the meeting in 211 (Livy 26.1.1) and probable meetings on that date in 215, 214, 205, 202, and 198 (Livy 23.31.1, 24.10.1, 28.38.14, 30.27.1, and 32.8.1, respectively).

39 Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. 2.13 347, n. 1.1 thank the referee for CQ for drawing my attention to this circumstance.

40 Willems, P., Le Sènate de la rèpublique romaine 2 (Paris, 1883), 149Google Scholar, n. 1. Under the empire, the statutory avoidance of holding a meeting of the Senate on the Ides of March (Suet. Iul. 88) caused 14 March to be treated as a regular meeting day (legitimus senatus) under the lex Mia passed by Augustus in 9 B.C. (Suet. Aug. 35.3):Talbert, R., The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton, 1984), 209.Google Scholar

41 Stein, Paul, Die Senatussitzungen der ciceronischen Zeit (68–43) (Münster, 1930), 119.Google Scholar

42 Cic. Phil. 2.88. One other possible item on the agenda is less easy to accept at face value. A number of sources (e.g. Suet. Iul. 79.3; App. B. Civ. 2. 110; Plut. Caes. 64.2, cf. 60.1) state that one of the XVviri (Cotta) was to reveal at the meeting on the Ides a Sibylline oracle requiring Caesar to be named ‘king’ before his departure to do battle with the Parthians, but according to Cicero (Div. 2. 110), this was only a rumour. Of course, even a rumour could have influenced the course of the conspiracy, as both Dio (44.15.4) and Appian (B. Civ. 2.113) claim that it did. See Horsfall (n. 32), 192, for a good account of the role this rumour may have played.

43 See above, n. 32. A date in late February (or early March?) suits the statement in Cicero (Phil. 2.81) that Antony's threat to block Dolabella's election was made ‘many months in advance’ (multis ante mensibus), presumably at the meeting of the Senate on 1 January.

44 According to Weinstock (n. 17), 345, the versions of Spurinna's prophecy given by both Valerius Maximus and Suetonius must be later inventions.

45 Futura diceret laetiora, cum uellet (Suet. Iul. 77). For a good discussion of the need to take into account the context in which Cicero relates a particular historical episode in one of his philosophical treatises and to consider the reason why he relates the incident (i.e. what it is intended to prove), see M. Alexander, CP 94 (1999), 65–9.

46 Sallust (Cat. 31.9), for instance, could not resist taking Catiline's words that we know from Cicero (Mur. 51) were uttered shortly before the elections in 63 B.C and making them Catiline's parting threat when he dashed out of the Senate to leave Rome for the last time in November: incendium meum ruina restinguam ('I shall douse the conflagration that is being whipped up against me by means of general destruction'). Sallust's account of the context of these words ultimately prevailed over Cicero's because it was the ‘better’ story: Val. Max. 9.11.3; Florus 2.12.7.

47 Despite scholarly opinion to the contrary, Polyaenus’ account of this incident (Strat. 8.23.33) fails to connect it with Caesar's Spanish campaign. The incident is related by Polyaenus in a section that comes shortly after his summary of the final campaigns in the civil war (23.30–31). The sole ground for assigning the incident to Spain is Polyaenus’ statement that ‘the soldiers took courage’ (οἱ στρατιται τοτ’ ακοὺσαντες θρρησαν) when they heard Caesar dismiss the ominous sacrifice with the flippant remark that ‘it was nothing strange to find no cor (the seat of reason) in a beast lacking reason’. These soldiers, however, may well have been Caesar's veterans who were present in Rome in the spring of 44, awaiting allotments of land in the colonies planned for his discharged soldiers (App. B.Civ. 2.119, 125, 133–5; Dio 44.34.1–3; Flor. 2.17.2).

48 So Butler, H. and Cary, M. assume in their commentary on Suet. Iul. 77 (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar, basing their conclusion on the false clue provided by Appian {B.Civ. 2.116) that the only other securely dated occurrence of this incident was on the day of Caesar's death.

49 Cramer (n. 2), 77, n. 240, anticipated this explanation by claiming that Spurinna's warning reported by Val. Max. and Suetonius was preceded by another haruspical warning attested by Cic. Div. 1.119. Cramer, however, failed to appreciate that the reference in Valerius to the ‘thirty days’ leading up to the Ides makes it virtually certain that Val. Max. and Cic. (but not necessarily Suet.) refer to the same occasion.

50 The caput (i.e. the lobe) of the liver was missing (Cic. Div. 1.119), a not infrequent occurrence at sacrifices: examples collected by Thulin (n. 1), 2451. According to Cic. {Div. 2.32), haruspices regarded no feature of the entrails more baleful than a missing lobe:nihil (haruspices) putant accidere potuisse tristius; cf. above, n. 30. App. (B. Civ. 2.116) placed this incident too on the Ides and further claimed that it was a repetition of an earlier sacrifice in Spain in 45. Possibly Appian invented earlier occurrences of both the incident of the missing heart and the missing caput of the liver, which Cicero, a contemporary witness, assigns to February 44, so that he could claim that a repetition of the same prodigy foreshadowed the deaths of both Caesar and Alexander the Great (2.152–3).

51 The plans for the election of Dolabella to fill the consulship to be left vacant by Caesar, together with the gathering of Caesar's veterans to see him off (App. B. Civ. 2. 119,120), must have made it possible for Spurinna, as well as for any other perceptive observer, to estimate the likely date of that departure.

52 For the widespread occurrence of thirty days as a standard interval of time for religious or secular purposes in Indo-European cultures (doubtless arising from the heavenly time-marker provided by the length of a lunar synodic period, = 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3 seconds), see R. Dull, 'Triginta Dies', Festschr. f. P. Koschaker (Weimar, 1939), 27–11, esp. 27–35. I thank Michael Alexander for causing me to entertain this explanation of the thirty days attested solely by Valerius Maximus’ account of Spurinna's prophecy.

53 Truly remarkable coincidences do sometimes occur in the course of history. For two striking, ‘believe-it-or-not’ examples, see John T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B. C. and Caesar's Funeral Games (Atlanta, 1997), 62, n. 3.

54 The unlikelihood of this meeting is pointed out by Hohl (n. 28), 111–12 and Rawson (n. 15), 144. Weinstock (n. 17), 346, n. 1, accepts the possibility of the meeting, without treating the verbal exchange between Spurinna and Caesar as necessarily historical.

55 This is how the passage is usually interpreted: e.g. TLL 9.2.519.81 s.v. ‘officium’. F. Münzer, ‘Domitius (43)’, RE 5.1 (1903), 1422, on the other hand, speculated that the meeting may have been occasioned by a sacrifice attended by both Caesar and Domitius, if Caesar had already appointed Domitius apontifex (an office later attested by CIL 6.1301). Possibly such a sacrifice was called for by the festival of Anna Perenna on 15 March (sacrificial rites to Anna Perenna during March attested by Macrob. Sat. 1.12.6; public prayers attested by Lydus, De Metis. 4.36): see E. Becht, ‘Regeste fiber die Zeit von Casars Ermordung bis zum Umschwung in der Politik des Antonius', Freiburg diss. (1911), 7, n. 2.

56 Appian (B. Civ. 2.149) alone of our other sources appears to follow the tradition found in Val. Max. when he puts the meeting between Caesar and Spurinna ‘at about dawn’ (περ τν ω), without specifying the location.

57 Nic. Dam. Vit. Caes. 23.83; Dio 44.17.3; Plut. Caes. 63.7; App. B. Civ. 2.115.

58 For a good account of these final hours, see Horsfall (n. 32), 197–9.

59 So Plutarch (Caes. 63.3), Suetonius (ltd. 81.4), and Dio (44.18.4).

60 Thulin (n. 1), 2434, insists that the seer was not Spurinna on the grounds that the prophecy was hostile to Caesar's cause (see n. 61 below), but the question is left open by Rawson (n. 15), 143 and by Pease ([n. 2], 440) in his note on Div. 2.52.

61 Possibly this date was singled out because traditionally it was considered unlucky to begin important undertakings during the period immediately preceding the winter solstice (Ter. Phorm. 709–10 and Donatus ad loc). Alternatively, the seer may have been in sympathy with Caesar's enemies, wanting to delay Caesar's arrival so that, as Cicero (loc. cit.) remarks, the republican forces could gather in greater numbers.

62 So Minucius Felix (Oct. 26.4) and Cyprian (Quod Idola Dii Non Sint 5). Suet. (Iul. 59) simply reports that the escape of a sacrificial victim, when Caesar was officiating, did not cause him to postpone his departure for the African campaign—possibly a confusion on Suetonius’ part (?) with an incident in 49 B.C. (Dio 41.39.2).