The Ides of March

In Competition No. 2486 you were invited to submit a retrospective verse comment from the other world on the assassination by Caesar or by one of the conspirators. Most of you chose to put yourself in Caesar’s bloodied sandals, consigning the conspirators to the sidelines, which they would have hated. Adam Campbell was pithy and to the point:
Talk about being stabbed in the back!
Nasty way of getting the sack.
The prizewinners, printed below, scoop £25 each. The extra fiver goes to D.A Prince, who used some nice half rhymes. I particularly liked ‘whine’ with ‘Elysium’, the rhyme and the meaning working together in a very satisfying way. A commendation to Ray Kelley, whose Caesar, vanity undented by millennia of self-reflection, laments being played by Louis Calhern rather than by Olivier in Joseph Mankiewicz’s monochrome masterpiece.

So Death, the necessary end, comes quick
In Fate’s conspiracy. I now could bear
The cutting thrust of bloody Senate blades
And manifesting of Calpurnia’s dream,
Did not the needle of the Soothsayer’s whine
Echo through all Elysium.