Whether you’re a history buff, or you survived English Lit, or you saw a meme showing a knife impaling a bottle of salad dressing and Googled for an explanation, you know that Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15th, also known as “The Ides of March.”
The short-and-sweet version of the story is that on that date in 44 BC, Marcus Junius Brutus (and 60 of his fellow Roman senators) stabbed Caesar until he was dead.
Politically, the assassination was an assertion of republicanism. (Y’know, back when republicans were men of action.) To invoke a well-known Latin phrase, “Sic semper tyrannis” — translated, “Thus always to tyrants.”
More than that, to everyday Romans it represented liberation from oppression, viewed by the public as akin to slavery. After the assassination, in fact, Brutus himself issued an “Ides of March” Denarius coin which depicted (among other things) a pileus — a cap formally presented to freed slaves.
The death of Julius Caesar was portrayed in terms that all Romans understood: Libertas.
As a free man myself, I view The Ides of March symbolically as a sort of Liberation Day, or at least a first step toward freedom. Such a journey is not without challenges, of course — Rome’s eventual fall is proof of that, both literally and metaphorically — but it has to begin somewhere.
I say it began on the 15th of March.
“Hunc Ego hominem ex jure Quiritum liberum esse aio.”
from the Roman legal ritual of manumission:
“I declare this man is free.”
I didn’t have much pressing to do Sunday morning. Severe weather wouldn’t get here ’til the afternoon, and I’d finished pretty much all of my chores the day before.
In the interest of accomplishing something, however, I brought out the weedwhacker and addressed the slope west of The Citadel.
Knocking down tall clumps of dead grasses neatened up my view of the rock formation. That pleased me. And again, it was something.
I took a shower, did laundry and fixed myself some lunch. I put scraps of red onion on the food dehydrator.
We saw rain after noon, but nothing remarkable. The wind started getting serious around 3:15pm, though, and power flickered off and on.
It went out for two minutes, then returned to stay. I switched the TV on, launched YouTube and tuned-in to Ryan Hall Y’all to see what might be in store for us.
As soon as he appeared on the screen, I heard him say “Mountain Home, Arkansas.”
In the next breath, he said “Yellville.”
We had a mother of a storm bearing down on us. It showed signs of rotation.
Just then, the wind outside began shrieking like a jet engine, throwing debris against the west wall of the cabin. That was followed by 30 seconds of heavy hail, which turned into torrential rain.
No thunder, no lightning. No tornado. But short of a hurricane, it was as intense as any weather I’ve even been through.
The line of storms was clear of us by 5pm. Gusty winds stuck around.
Once the worst had passed, text messages started to come in from neighbors — we check on each other out here. Everyone came through it fine. One neighbor reported losing two large cedars, narrowly missing the house when they fell.
The consensus was that it was the strongest wind anyone had ever experienced here on The Mountain. That’s really saying something.
I didn’t venture out before the sun went down, so I don’t know if we suffered any damage away from the cabin. We’ll see what it looks like in the morning light.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable