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Op-ed: The Great Statesman Cicero Presides Over The Ides Of March Forever

March 15, 2017

By Jamie Gass

“How I could wish that you had invited me to that most glorious banquet on the Ides of March!” the heroic Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote to one of the Roman senators who stabbed perpetual dictator Julius Caesar to death more than two millennia ago.

The Ides of March on March 15, 44 B.C., is among the most important dates in the political history of Western civilization. It marks the assassination of one of the world’s worst tyrants, who demolished Roman law by marching on his own city and ultimately was made a god.

When young senator Marcus Brutus dealt the final blow slaying Caesar, he raised his dagger and acknowledged Cicero for helping recover liberty. Cicero’s inspiring oratory against tyranny established him as the greatest apostle of political freedom and civic virtue the Western world has ever known.