Beware the Ides of March

[Lord of Angmar]

This is naught but a quick thought that occurred to me the last time I read the Return of the King. 'Tis probably not worthy of a new topic but there are no other threads on which it would be logical to post.

In the Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien kept a clear chronology of dates, but the dates never really seem to have any meaning outside of the text. In Return of the King, it is stated that Theoden dies on March 15, the Ides of March, the same day that Julius Caesar was murdered. The deaths do not seem to bear any relation, but do you think that Tolkien consciously intended the date to match?

The only other semblance of a parallel I could find between the two deaths (aside from the obvious fact that they were both kings/emperors) was that their deaths were caused by an enemy and actually carried out, in a sense, by friends. Cassius was the plotter of Caesar's murder, and Brutus (at least partially unwillingly) helped to carry it out. Similarly (if you can call it similar [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] ), the Lord of the Nazgul is the "plotter" of Theoden's death, but Theoden is actually killed by his faithful horse, Snowmane.