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Today is the notorious Ides of March - March 15th in the calendar of ancient Rome. This is the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar two thousand and sixty one years ago. According to Plutarch, who wrote his biography, a soothsayer warned Caesar to ‘Beware the Ides of March’, a warning which he dismissed, even though his wife had a dream of holding him murdered in her arms. Shakespeare makes a tense political drama of the murder plot and its aftermath. I remember being entranced by the film version which coincided with studying the play at school and had Marlon Brando as the demagogue Mark Antony. Shakespeare took some liberties with the history, but the outline of the play is grounded in sober fact. Julius Caesar stands out as a type of the successful politician who eventually overreached himself. He was hugely ambitious, ruthless, risk-taking and a genius at self-promotion. The army was his power base and he fought military campaigns in Gaul, Germany and here in Britain, winning victories which made him rich enough to pursue his political ambitions. He shamelessly bought allies; showering gifts on his followers, promising prosperity to the urban poor, threatening and silencing his rivals. As his popularity grew he showed less and less respect for the political checks and balances of the Roman Republic: those who eventually stabbed him to death in the senate house feared he was about to take the final unacceptable step and make himself a king. Julius Caesar is a fascinating case study in the strength and fragility of worldly power. He certainly achieved a lot, yet it is hard to find in him any real conviction other than that of his own greatness, which was fair enough in Roman culture where prestige was all. If his spirit lives on in some twilight zone of ancient souls you would think he might be pleased at still being a household name. And his name was in fact perpetuated in the German ‘Kaisar’ and the Russian ‘Czar’. He got his reward, a kind of immortality. Yet the cost was huge. After his death Rome endured a punishing civil war, which only ended with the rise of the first Roman emperor Augustus, who brought peace. This is the ‘Caesar Augustus’ who is briefly mentioned in the New Testament and ruled at the time of the birth of Jesus. The emperor knew nothing of Jesus, though Jesus could hardly avoid the emperor whose image was on the coinage and on which he wryly commented, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’. Yet his teaching is more enduring than anything Julius or Augustus Caesar achieved, pointing to a kingdom which can never be destroyed because unlike earthly kingdoms, it is not of this world: ‘Anyone who wishes to be great among you, must be your servant, and anyone who wishes to be first, must be slave of all’.