Ides

Original Iron Maiden singer Paul Di'Anno was jailed on March 11th for scamming welfare. I was surprised to learn he wasn't there already.

More to the point, on this day in history 2055 years ago, Roman general and "dictator in perpetuity" Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of constitutionalist senators who opposed his centralization of the Roman bureaucracy and his authoritarian reforms of the Roman state. Among the killers was his friend, Marcus Junius Brutus. The subsequent civil war was a critical point in the transformation from Republic to Empire under Caesar's nephew, the Emperor Caesar Agustus. As I do every year, I will observe the Ides of March and commemorate Caesar's death by listening to Iron Maiden's Killers, featuring its devastating one-two opening punch of "The Ides Of March" and "Wrathchild."

Up the Irons!