If it weren't for Roman history and Shakespeare, there would be nothing
ominous about the Ides of March. Its etymology is innocuous enough: it
simply means the middle of March. However, the events of this day in 44
B.C. forever changed the language used in association with it. We would
like to mark the middle of March by highlighting Classical literature,
or works that have been inspired by Latin and Greek writers. This
includes fine press printers who have been enticed by the challenge of
designing Classical texts, from Giambattista Bodoni, whose vast oeuvre
includes a handsome edition of
Anacreon in Greek, to the
Officina Bodoni,
which often produced original texts and their translations in the same
work. Many book illustrators have also found inspiration in Classical
texts, including the French Catalan sculptor Aristide Maillol, who
embraced a simpler line in his
Odes of Horace, and Georges Barbier and Jean-Francois Schmied, whose
Les Chansons de Bilitis
is widely considered an Art-Deco highspot. As with Caesar's walk to the
Theater of Pompey, books also have their destiny as Terentianus reminds
us:
Habent sua fata libell.
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