The Ides of March, Lavinia Fisher, and the Birth of Legendary Last Words
- History, Haunts, & Hahas!
- Mar 15
- 4 min read
The Ides of March, Lavinia Fisher, and the Birth of Legendary Last Words
How history and folklore shape the lines we remember
Every year on March 15 — the Ides of March — history remembers one of the most famous betrayals in human history: the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE.
Most people associate that day with a dramatic line that echoes through classrooms, films, and theater:
“Et tu, Brute?”
But there’s a fascinating twist.
The line is almost certainly not historically provable.
And that makes it the perfect comparison to one of Charleston’s most famous legends — the supposed final words of Lavinia Fisher, the woman often called America’s first female serial killer:
“If you have a message for the devil, give it to me and I’ll carry it to him.”
Both quotes live in the space between history and folklore — where real events become legendary stories.
The Ides of March: A Real Event That Became Dramatic Legend
In the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides referred to the midpoint of the month. For March, May, July, and October, the Ides fell on the 15th.¹
Originally, the Ides of March was not ominous at all. It was associated with religious observances and the festival of Anna Perenna, a celebration of renewal held along the banks of the Tiber River where Romans gathered to eat, drink, and celebrate the coming of spring.²
That changed forever on March 15, 44 BCE.
On that day, Julius Caesar attended a Senate meeting at the Theatre of Pompey in Rome. A group of roughly 60 conspirators, including Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, assassinated him in what they believed was an act to restore the Roman Republic.³
Ancient historians such as Suetonius and Plutarch describe Caesar being stabbed multiple times by the conspirators, suffering 23 wounds.⁴
But none of the earliest historical sources confirm the famous line “Et tu, Brute?”
The phrase actually comes from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar (1599), where it is used as a dramatic moment of betrayal.⁵
In other words, Shakespeare may have written the most famous “last words” in history.
Charleston’s Own Legendary Last Words
More than 1,800 years after Caesar’s assassination, Charleston developed its own version of the same storytelling phenomenon.
Lavinia Fisher, associated with the early-19th-century Six Mile House outside Charleston, became one of the most infamous figures in regional crime folklore.
The story claims that Lavinia and her husband John Fisher ran an inn that secretly murdered travelers, dropping them through a trapdoor so they could be robbed.
Historians, however, note that the evidence for these claims is thin and heavily disputed. The Fishers were executed in 1820 after being convicted of highway robbery and assault, but the sensational serial-killer narrative appears largely in later retellings and tourism lore rather than contemporary court records.⁶
Just like Caesar’s famous quote, Lavinia Fisher is also credited with a line that historians cannot verify:
“If you have a message for the devil, give it to me and I’ll carry it to him.”
Different versions of the story exist, and there is no surviving execution transcript confirming the quote.⁷
Yet the line has endured for generations because it perfectly captures the image of a defiant villain facing death.
When History Provides the Event — and Folklore Writes the Dialogue
This is one of the most fascinating things about storytelling across centuries.
The events themselves are real:
Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.
Lavinia Fisher really was executed in Charleston in 1820.
But the memorable dialogue attached to those events evolved later.
Historians often describe this process as legend formation. When a dramatic event occurs, later storytellers sometimes attach a line that captures the emotional meaning of the moment:
betrayal
defiance
wickedness
irony
Over time, the line becomes so satisfying that people repeat it as if it were documented fact.
In Caesar’s case, Shakespeare gave the world a line that perfectly embodied ultimate betrayal.
In Lavinia Fisher’s case, Charleston folklore created a line that embodies defiant evil facing justice.
Neither quote is firmly proven — but both help explain why the stories remain unforgettable.
Why These Stories Still Matter
History and folklore often work together rather than against each other.
Historical records give us the framework of what happened.
Folklore fills in the emotional details of how people imagine it happening.
Understanding the difference allows us to tell richer stories — ones that honor both evidence and cultural memory.
That approach is exactly what we strive for at History, Haunts, & Hahas!, where Charleston’s ghost stories are shared alongside the documented history that shaped them.
Because Charleston’s streets, much like ancient Rome, are filled with moments where truth and legend have been intertwined for centuries.
Sometimes the most interesting stories are not just about what happened — but about how people chose to remember it.
Sources
Marcus Terentius Varro, De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language), via Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University
Ovid, Fasti, Book III — description of the festival of Anna Perenna
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press.
Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars – Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Folger Shakespeare Library edition
https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/julius-caesar/
South Carolina Department of Archives and History, records relating to the Fisher case (1820)
Charleston County Public Library – Local History collections discussing variations of the Lavinia Fisher legend
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