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The question of what actually happened on the Ides of March, 44 B.c. is merely incidental to most ancient historians, concerned as they are with Caesar's intentions and the assassins' motives. On the Ides more varied and abundant information survives, I believe, than on any other day in Roman or Greek history. But this evidence is full of obscurities and inconsistencies, largely unexplored; nor has it been examined specifically for the light it sheds on the public life of the late Republic. The outline of the day's events is easily discovered; in this paper I shall examine some of the details, with the aim of showing, above all, why the conspirators settled on the Ides of March and the Curia Pompei as the time and place for their deed.

Jupiter, in his prophetic speech to Venus (Aen. i. 257 ff.) foretells that Aeneas will rule for three years in Italy, that Ascanius will complete the thirty years of rule at Lavinium, and that he will then found Alba, under whose kings' rule 300 years will elapse until the birth of Romulus. The sequence 3–30–300 is unmistakeable: tertia (265) and temaque (266) … triginta (269) … ter centum (272); no effort is required to see that the total of these numbers is 333 and the total is clearly more significant than the antiquarian associations of the individual numbers

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