Et Tu, Amiculus? Preview Sent to Printer!

Jeez, Travis, I know Rome wasn't burned in a day, but could you speed things up with this book? It's like I've been waiting for a thousand years or something!

The Roman calendar: just as user-friendly as the Roman numeral and the abacus.

"Wait-wait-wait...'urgh, gurgle, ack?' What kind of last words are those? Cassius, make sure Bill Shakespeare does a rewrite on those in 1600 years..."

Happy Ides, Amiculi!

C'mon, you know I couldn't go without posting on March 15th, right? However, don't despair. This isn't just a space-filler: I have news, too!

I'm excited to report that the preview Amiculus: Ex Libris Amiculi has been sent to the printer! If all goes well, if I've set my bleeds properly and sorted out my RGBs from my CMYKs, we should have printed copy on our hands in plenty of time for SPACE!

In other fun news, I'm also investigating distribution prospects for the comic. Nothing is remotely close to being set in stone at the moment, but Amiculus could end up having a presence on Amazon and digitally at Comixology.com. Stay tuned!

And now, here's a special

IDES OF MARCH ROMAN DEBAUCHERY FUN FACT!

First let's start with the name. What the heck is an "ides?" Well, the Romans didn't distinguish individual days from each other the same way we do. There were three distinct days in each month: the kalends or 1st day of the month (from which we get calendar), the nones (usually the 5th or 7th day of the month) and the ides (the 13th or 15th day of the month). All other dates were identified by how much they preceded these three days. (March 22, for example, would be identified as "the tenth day before the kalends of April.")

Now let's proceed to what actually happened on the Ides of March. Everyone knows the basics: Julius Caesar stabbed by senators, Brutus delivering "the unkindest cut of all," Julius's famous last words to him ("Et tu, Brute?") then falling down dead and collapsing the Roman Republic underneath him. 

But how accurate was that? These details are largely known from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599), but Shakespeare was known for taking dramatic license with history, and Caesar's actual last words are in dispute. The Roman historian Suetonius claims that his last words were in Greek: "καὶ σὺ τέκνον," translated as "you too, young man," "you too, child," or "you too, my child," from which the theory has since sprung that Brutus was Caesar's son. The historian Plutarch claimed he said nothing, but only pulled his toga over his head before he died. What is certain is that, whatever his last words were or weren't, they were definitely not "Pizza Pizza."