The Ides of March (novel)

The Ides of March ( The Ides of March ) is an epistolary novel by Thornton Wilder from 1948.

Action

The Ides of March is about the characters and events that led to the murder of the Roman commander and dictator Julius Caesar, and ends with the assassination on the Ides of March in the year 44 BC

Structure

The novel is divided into four books, each of which starts earlier and ends later than the corresponding previous. The poems of Catullus and the epilogue of Suetonius are the only parts of the text that do not originate in the imagination of the author. Nevertheless, numerous historical events described (including Cleopatra's visit to Rome ).

Historical authenticity

The novel is, in the words of the author, one that, fantasy about certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman Republic ... A historical reconstruction is not the primary goal of this work. ''

Although the novel describes the events surrounding Caesar's murder, several prior events are described in a way as if they were contemporary, such as the scandal Publius Clodius Pulcher caused by its penetration into the mysteries of the Bona Dea, and the subsequent divorce from his second wife Pompeia Caesars 62/61 BC

Several emerging in the Roman historical figures were 44 BC already died, as Cato the Younger († 46 BC ), Julia Marcia († 68/69 BC), Publius Clodius Pulcher ( v † 52. BC), and ( most likely) Catullus ( † ca 54 BC).

Expenditures and obligations

The original edition published in 1948 by the publisher Harper & Brothers in New York.

In German, the novel first appeared in 1949 in the translation of Herberth E. Herlitschka Suhrkamp Verlag. In the same year the first edition of 10,000 copies was sold off and another printed in the same amount.

A paperback edition was published somewhat later in the S. Fischer Verlag and sold until 1960 approximately 40,000 times.