Kalends of February - Historical and Cultural Background

Historical and Cultural Background

• Historically, Caesar's death has been dated on Ides of March, not on Kalends of February (name of this episode). It's because in this series version of events, it's on the Kalends of February when Caesar announces he will be creating a hundred new senators, which proves to be the final straw for the conspirators.
• While inspecting their new farmland, the priests call out the names of agricultural deities. Niobe and Vorenus then lay on ground in the symbolic act of sexual intercourse, these rituals are to bless the land with fertility.
• As Vorenus is leaving to respond to a summons by Caesar, Niobe wraps a small bundle of ashes from the family shrine in cloth, and tucks it in Vorenus' toga whispering, "Juno protect you." Juno was the Roman incarnation of the Greek goddess Hera, goddess of marriage and family bonds. In a way, Niobe is calling on the power of their marriage to protect Vorenus. The gesture is also ironic and foretelling in the episode. Juno was a wife famously betrayed, again and again, by Jupiter, who had many lovers. Juno often exacted meticulous revenge upon the women and any of their offspring by Jupiter; for example, she was a lifelong enemy of Hercules, and punished Europa severely. When she said these words, Niobe had been unfaithful to Vorenus and had Lucius by another man, although she had fooled Vorenus into thinking it was Vorenus's own grandson. By invoking Juno, Niobe is in effect allowing Juno to have Vorenus informed of her disloyalty and offspring and be open to revenge. Just after leaving Niobe, Vorenus is told of Niobe's treachery and returns, enraged, with every right under Roman law to slaughter her and her child, just as Juno would have done in his situation.
• As Caesar and Vorenus are making their way to the Senate, they are surrounded by Lictors with their fasces. All magistrates whose office was recognized to be imbued with imperium were publicly escorted by Lictors—the number of them signifying the importance of the magistrate. As Dictator, Caesar is entitled to 24 of these escorts. Whether we see all 24 or not, the fasces of the Lictors have not had their axes removed even though they are within the boundaries of the pomerium. This is historically accurate, and only the lictors of a Dictator had axes within their fasces at all times. In this scene the lictors are carrying their fasces on their right shoulder when they should have been carried on their left, this is an inaccuracy stated in the audio commentary on the DVD.
• Plutarch said this of the assassination in his Life of Caesar: "For it had been agreed they should each of them make a thrust at him, and flesh themselves with his blood; for which reason Brutus also gave him one stab in the groin. Some say that he fought and resisted all the rest, shifting his body to avoid the blows, and calling out for help, but that when he saw Brutus's sword drawn, he covered his face with his robe and submitted, letting himself fall, whether it were by chance or that he was pushed in that direction by his murderers, at the foot of the pedestal on which Pompeius's statue stood, and which was thus wetted with his blood."
• It is said by Plutarch that Caesar's last act was to cover his face with his toga that his enemies might not see his face in the moment of death. This is captured in the series, although in the show he is unsuccessful in covering his face.
• In the episode, Caesar doesn't say the phrase "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?"). This derives from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599), where it actually forms the first half of a macaronic line: "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar." It has no basis in historical fact, and Shakespeare's use of Latin here is not from any assumption that Caesar would have been using the language, but because the phrase was already popular at the time the play was written. Later in the episode, when Servilia suggests the murder of Antoni, Brutus says "and you, mother?"
• Brutus's ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus drove out the Etruscan monarchy in 509 BC. As a result, he felt obligated to kill Caesar in order to preserve the republic.
• After Caesar's death, Cassius declares: "Thus ever for tyrants". This phrase in Latin (sic semper tyrannis) later became associated with the death of Caesar, and was famously shouted by John Wilkes Booth, who identified himself with Brutus, after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865.