Hamilton College Professor of Classics Shelley Haley tells of a strange occurrence each year on the Ides of March at Caesar's tomb in Rome. March 15 commemorates the anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. "Every year on the Ides of March, a bouquet of red roses mysteriously appears on Caesar's tomb in the Roman forum. The Italian media has tried every year to catch whoever does it…and every year something goes awry; the roses appear and the perpetrator is never caught," Haley says.
Haley has appeared on the Learning Channel's Rome: Power and Glory mini-series and the BBC's TimeWatch segment about Cleopatra. She has written extensively on ancient Rome and Egypt. In 1999 she spent a month in South Africa as a foreign research fellow sponsored by government of South Africa, where she participated in the biennial conference of the Classical Association of South Africa and a Childhood in Antiquity conference.
