15 March 2023

· The Ides of March are come ·

• About the court and every house, and churches in the nights,
• The dogs did howl, and everywhere appeared most ghastly sprites.
• And with an earthquake shaken was the town. Yet not could all
• These warnings of the Gods prevent the treason that would fall,
• Nor overcome the Destinies. The naked blades were brought
• Into the temple. For no place in all the town was thought
• So apt to work the mischief in, or for them to commit
• The heinous murder, as the court in which they used to sit
• In council.

re-adapted from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, Book 15

• • Mobiles: the lines above need more horizontal space than most phones provide, causing them to break into indented second lines which look bad and read worse. Rotate your device to landscape to see the excerpt without the breaks.

• • More from the 1567 translation of Metamorphoses, and a few other examples of iambic heptameter: Seven Times Fourteener, posted 14 March 2018.

• • Banner: from Julius Caesar
• · Royal Shakespeare Company, 2017
• · directed by Angus Jackson

VERO NIHIL VERIUS