“Beware the Ides of March," warned the soothsayer in William Shakespeare's “Julius Caesar.” During the Roman Empire, people believed soothsayers and astrologers could predict the future and relied on them for guidance.
Belief in omens persisted into Elizabethan England, where many thought the positions of stars and planets determined human fate. Soothsayers claimed to predict the future based on natural occurrences or by examining the bloody entrails of slaughtered animals.
Fortune-tellers appear frequently in Shakespeare's plays, though scholars believe the Bard was aware of emerging modern astronomy. In “Julius Caesar,” Cassius declares:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves."
Yet Shakespeare’s soothsayer originates from the Roman historian Plutarch, who wrote of a warning to Caesar… "beware the Ides of March." Indeed, the middle of March proved bloody.
Ancient texts say nothing of blood moons, but Roman astrologers could predict lunar eclipses with mathematical precision. This year, modern astronomers forecast a total lunar eclipse just after midnight on March 14 — the Ides of March eve.
During a total lunar eclipse, Earth moves directly between the Sun and Moon. Some sunlight still reaches the Moon and passes through Earth's atmosphere, where shorter wavelengths of light are scattered. The remaining red light bends back toward the Moon casting it in an eerie reddish-orange glow.
So this year, when the Ides of March have come — “aye” — Blood Moon will be gone.
