Ides of October

Over the weekend of March 6-8 2020, the Dulcimer Association of Albany held its 31st Annual Dulcimer Festival in Latham, New York. The Dulcimer Association of Albany is a group of mountain dulcimer players who meet once a month to play dulcimers together. At the festival on Saturday, in a workshop called “Ensembles with Classical Music,” one of the handouts distributed to participants was a piece written by the workshop leader on October 15th. The title of the tune was “The Ides of October,” and as the Ides of March fall today, March 15th, here’s a little background on the Roman calendar.

“Beware the Ides of March,” a soothsayer warns Julius Caesar in Act 1 of William Shakespeare’s play, The Life and Death of Julius Caesar. By Act 3, scene 1, Julius Caesar announces to the soothsayer, “The Ides of March are come.” The soothsayer responds, “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

The Ides of March on an ancient Roman calendar is March 15th on a modern calendar. Also the Ides of May, July, and October fall on the 15th of each of those months; in all the other Roman months the Ides fall on the 13th on a modern calendar.

The Roman calendar fascinates beginning Latin students. A Roman counted forward to the next fixed date in a month. The first of every month in a Roman calendar is called Kalendae or Calends. The next fixed date is the Nonae or Nones (pronounced Nōnz) that fall on the 5th or 7th of a month, and the third fixed date is Idus or Ides on the 13th or 15th. To identify a date, a Roman counted the number of days to the next fixed date and that Roman included both the day he was on and the next fixed day. The modern date “March 13th” is written in Latin as III a.d. Id. Mart. (three days before the Ides of March) by counting the 13th (1), 14th (2), and 15th (3). The day before the next fixed date has a special designation; yesterday, March 14th, in Latin is prid. Id. Mart. “the day before” the Ides of March. 

Why do we still count down to the Ides of March? Great historical events capture the imagination. In American history we remember December 7th 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and we remember  D-Day, June 6th 1944, the invasion of Normandy, France. We will never forget September 11th 2001 when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were attacked. In Roman history on the Ides of March 44 B.C., a conspiracy of Roman senators assassinated the self-declared Dictator Perpetuus (Dictator for Life) Julius Caesar and precipitated the Roman Civil War that brought the Roman Republic to an end by 27 B.C. when a new leader, Julius Caesar’s great-nephew, later known as Caesar Augustus, became the first Roman emperor. 

And the Ides of October? We both remember and celebrate this date, for in 70 B.C. the great Roman poet Vergil was born.

Boning Up on Biotechnology

Public television station channel 25, WNYC in the New York City area, offers programming about people and events in New York City. A half-hour program on Monday evenings called Her Big Idea introduces viewers to four women entrepreneurs in New York City. A recent episode featured a woman who began a construction company; one who started a hydroponic farm in a vacant 2500-square-foot lot; one who started a clothing collection and repurposing company to keep millions of pounds of clothing out of landfills; and Nina Tandon, co-founder and CEO of EpiBone, a biotechnology company “on a mission to use groundbreaking research to transform skeletal repair” by allowing a patient to grow new bone from his/her own cells.

The name EpiBone contains “epi” a Greek preposition with several meanings including “on, upon, after, at.” Epi appears in English words like epitaph, something (written) on a tomb or ephemeral, something that passes after a day or brief time. An eponym puts a name upon a thing, like watt, bloomers, and vulcanization, three words that originate in the names of a Scottish inventor (James Watt), an American woman (Amelia Bloomer), and a Roman god (Vulcan). EpiBone is a big idea coming to life.

Ports in a Storm

Buckets of rain fell in Rose Bay, Nova Scotia on Sunday, January 12th, 2020. The New Year was well underway, and neighbors on Kingsburg Road gathered after dinner to taste a Warre 1975 Port that had been carefully stored for the past forty-five years. Decanted into a crystal pitcher, the ruby liquid awaited eager lips on this January night, as the rain finally stopped and the wind began to rise.

We held our small glasses to the light and examined the fine color, a blend of amber and ruby, that boded well for our tongues. We inhaled the heady aroma of the wine. The first sip revealed a complex and warm treat. Five-year-old cheddar, crackers, and dark chocolate were among the accompaniments. We sipped and conversed and held up our glasses to delight in the clear and beautiful color. Alas, the small glasses were soon drained, and we savored a twenty-one-year-old late-bottled vintage from the Opimian Society, the Canadian wine club for discriminating lovers of wine.

We finished the evening with a deep red five-year-old port full of fruity flavors including fig, cherry, and spice, from the Sainte Famille winery in Falmouth, Nova Scotia. 

The Opimian Society, now known as Opimian Wine Club, derived its name in 1973 from Lucius Opimius, a Roman consul who declared a Falernian wine vintage in 121 BC superb. Opimianus became a Latin adjective to describe an excellent Falernian wine. (This Wine Spectator article has more information on Falernian wine.) 

The ports we encountered in our winter storm were worthy to be deemed Opimian.

Cyclops Watch

What better way to celebrate Rome's birthday (founded, according to legend on April 21, 753 BC) than to write a little more about the classical world around us? Felicissimum diem natalem Romae!

No need to be on the alert for Cyclopes. The advertising copy acknowledges that we all have cell phones, so who really needs a watch? Those of us who remain detached from our phones love watches, even if we are retired and no longer ruled by the clock. Some of us like analog watches, because we like to watch the hour and minute (and sometimes second) hands circle the clock face. The circular shape reminds us that though time is linear for us humans, much of time is cyclical. Hours renew themselves twice a day, full moons come and go, and seasons roll regularly, especially in places like New York state, where after a long winter the daffodils and forsythia announce that spring has come. 

In the mail recently a clipping from a midwestern newspaper arrived from which I learned about Mr Jones Cyclops watch. Always a fan of watches with classical names, I searched for an image of the Cyclops and was smitten by its simplicity and beauty. 

From Greek mythology a Cyclops was a giant human that had one eye on its face. The most famous literary Cyclops was Polyphemus from Homer’s Odyssey, the cannibal who imprisoned Odysseus and his crew in a cave and devoured some of the men until Odysseus plied him with wine, knocked him out, and blinded his one eye with a stake. In Greek kuklos (cyclos) means “circle” and ops means “face”; if you had one eye in the middle of your face, probably the first impression of you would be of a “circle-face.” 

The Cyclops watch is for those who appreciate less exactitude in keeping track of the circling hours, and it gives new meaning to a “circle-face.”

As I was writing the above paragraphs, I heard a news story about underwater tours to the wreck of the Titanic. And how exactly would one arrive two miles below the surface of the North Atlantic? Via Cyclops 2 submersible, of course.

High-flying Internet

A little opinion piece written by a twelve-year-old appeared in the local paper recently. The student believes that drones will serve many purposes and reported on a Facebook drone, called Aquila, designed to bring the internet to remote places. The Latin word aquila meaning “eagle,” is a nice name because the drone was being designed to fly high in the sky from where it could have an eagle’s eye view of the world below. Aquila is also a constellation, representing the bird of Zeus/Jupiter.

Google also was investing in an internet-access drone company called Titan, also rooted in classical mythology, as the twelve Titans were the race of gods that preceded and then produced the Olympian gods.

A little more research yielded information that both programs were being discontinued, as of a few months ago, but it is always fun to discover ancient classical names for cutting-edge technology.

Ancient Teacher, Modern Heroes

Reading obituaries in the local weekly paper, I came upon an organization called the Equus Effect in Sharon, Connecticut. The Equus Effect is an organization whose mission is “To help returning veterans build healthy, authentic relationships at home, work and school through meaningful engagement with horses.” Equus is Latin for “horse” and gives English the words equine meaning “like a horse” and equitation meaning “horseback riding.”  

The logo at the top of the organization’s website is a sketch of Chiron, the wise centaur who was the teacher of ancient Greek heroes like Jason and Achilles. Chiron is also the constellation Sagittarius, the archer, from the Latin sagitta meaning “arrow.” From where did Chiron obtain his wisdom? Taught by Greek goddess of the hunt Artemis (Roman Diana) and god of the sun, music, and prophecy Apollo, Chiron in turn taught his students the arts of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy, among others. Chiron is a fitting representative for the Equus Effect, and he is still helping heroes.

Mythological Games

Here I am in beautiful Rose Bay, Nova Scotia, flipping through post-Christmas sale flyers. In the BestBuy flyer I find a large ad for logitech gaming accessories, and I am amused and provoked by the names of three components: the G810 Orion Spectrum RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, the G502 Proteus Core Tunable Gaming Mouse, and the G933 Artemis Spectrum Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset. A visit to the logitech website yields much technical information about these components, but I could find no reason for the mythological designations. You may know Orion as a constellation easily visible in the northeastern United States all winter; a mythological giant, Orion was also a famous hunter. A user of an Orion gaming keyboard would feel like a giant, able to control as if with a giant’s eye-view. Proteus was a mythological sea-being, able to prophesy the future to anyone who could catch and hold him. We still use the adjective protean in English to describe something that changes its shape or is difficult to hold. A Proteus mouse changes its configuration shape "to help gamers maximize their victory potential." Artemis, known in Latin as Diana, was the Greek goddess of the hunt, the twin sister of Apollo. She remained unmarried, and she was a powerful huntress, exacting terrible punishments with her bow. A user of an Artemis headset would feel powerful indeed. 

Also on the logitech website was a link to PAX, an acronym standing for Penny Arcade (E)xpo(sition), an annual gaming show that attracts tens of thousands of participants. If you’re a gamer, the next PAX East is approaching in Boston, March 10-12, 2017! I am not a gamer, but I appreciate gaming culture, much of which involves the ancient world. Games are built around ancient civilizations like Rome, and many game and technology developers, like logitech, seek product names from mythology, Greek, and Latin. I am secretly delighted that video games, many of which involve vicarious danger and war, have a conference whose name is the same as the Latin word pax meaning “peace.”