Month
Rome in December
Fields & crops
Olive picking and pressing, wood-cutting, and indoor work on rainy days; sowing ideally finished by the Kalends per Columella 11.2.
Courts & law
Courts closed for the Saturnalia; quaestors gave gladiatorial shows in December in late antiquity per the Chronography of 354.
Senate & politics
New tribunes of the plebs entered office on 10 December; outgoing magistrates closed their accounts before the year ended Republic.
Military
Winter quarters. Soldiers too kept the Saturnalia, choosing a mock 'king' per the Acts of Dasius, a late and disputed martyr text.
Festivals & religion
Faunalia (5 Dec.), Agonalia and Septimontium (11 Dec.), Consualia (15 Dec.), Saturnalia (from 17 Dec.), Opalia (19 Dec.), Divalia (21 Dec.), Larentalia (23 Dec.), and later the birthday of Sol Invictus (25 Dec.).
Daily life
December's highlight was the Saturnalia (from 17 December). Business stopped, people wore the casual pilleus cap and gave small gifts, and households let enslaved people eat with, or even be served by, their owners per Macrobius 1.7, Seneca Ep. 47. Seneca, though, notes that the inversion lasted only days; the rest of the year enslaved people stood silent and hungry while masters dined, and could be beaten for a cough per Seneca, Ep. 47. Seneca himself grumbled that the whole city "sweats" with feasting Seneca, Ep. 18.
On farms, olives were picked and pressed, and enslaved workers repaired tools and baskets on rainy days per Columella 11.2.
Sources: Varro, De Lingua Latina 6 · Chronography of 354 · Seneca, Epistles 18 and 47 · Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7–10
Day by day
- December 1 — Marcus Aurelius receives tribunician power
- December 2 — December gladiator shows begin
- December 3 — Catilinarian conspirators arrested
- December 4 — Constantius II condemns magicians
- December 5 — Faunalia (rural)
- December 6 — Clergy freed from extra burdens
- December 7 — Murder of Cicero
- December 8 — Birth of Horace
- December 9 — No appeals for convicted murderers and poisoners
- December 10 — Stilicho branded a public enemy
- December 11 — Agonalia & Septimontium; Julian enters Constantinople
- December 12 — Ludi Lancionici begin
- December 13 — Diocletian rumoured dead
- December 14
- December 15 — Birth of Nero; Birth of Lucius Verus; Consualia (winter)
- December 16 — The poor spared New Year 'tips' for the consuls
- December 17 — Saturnalia begins
- December 18 — Vitellius tries to abdicate
- December 19 — Opalia
- December 20 — Death of Vitellius
- December 21 — Divalia (Angeronalia); Senate grants Vespasian imperial powers
- December 22 — Diocletian's official birthday
- December 23 — Larentalia; Triumph of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus
- December 24 — Birth of Galba
- December 25 — Dies Natalis Solis Invicti
- December 26 — Constantine: final judgments stay final
- December 27 — Rome remembers Bishop Dionysius
- December 28 — Colony of Bononia (Bologna) founded
- December 29 — Lucius Silanus forced out of office
- December 30 — Birth of Titus
- December 31 — Assassination of Commodus
Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura quae legis hic.
“Some are good, some middling, more are bad, of what you read here.”