Ides of March – A Day Which Has Lived in Infamy for Over 2,000 Years

Today is a day which has lived in infamy for over 2,000 years. The Ides of March – the on which Julius Ceasar was assassinated by those who were closest to him.

Betrayal. Plotting a power grab by force. A familiar tray to those who think they are in charge of the world today. It might be instructive for them to learn what happened to the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar. For, “those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”

Caesar’s death was a closing event in the crisis of the Roman Republic, and triggered the civil war that would result in the rise to sole power of his adopted heir Octavian (later known as Augustus). Writing under Augustus, Ovid portrays the murder as a sacrilege, since Caesar was also the Pontifex Maximus of Rome and a priest of Vesta. On the anniversary of Caesar’s death in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, Octavian executed 300 senators and knights who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius, the brother of Mark Antony.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his masterpiece “Slaughterhouse Five.”

Whose funeral is it? Peace Doves’?

US-RUSSIA PEACE TALKS IN LONDON BREAK DOWN

(They say, “a picture is worth a thousand words” – see above photo)

“Ukraine Peace Doves” Released by Pope Attacked by Black Crows

Speaking of Peace Doves, after saying a prayer for Ukraine on Sunday, Jan 26 at St Peter’s Square, the Pontiff helped schoolchildren release the doves from the window of the Apostolic Palace as a peace gesture. Two larger birds swooped down immediately like dive bombers on the defenseless doves as tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in the Vatican watched in horror.

Guess the peace prayer did not work. For, the Vatican St Peter’s Square Sunday Mass attack was an eerie prelude to the bloody coup d’etat  in Kiev on Feb 20 in which more than 77 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured.

The Vatican doves survived, by the way. The Kiev policemen and demonstrators weren’t so lucky.

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