Month
Rome in July
Fields & crops
Harvest finished in the uplands; threshing and storage, stubble burned or grazed, and the first ploughing of fallow per Columella 11.2. Cato advises that olive groves be hoed and vines tied in summer, and that the threshing floor be ready before grain is brought in per Cato, Agr. 2, 91.
Courts & law
Courts sat less during the Ludi Apollinares (6–13 July); much elite business paused as senators left the hot city late Republic.
Senate & politics
Renamed from Quintilis in 44 BC for Julius Caesar, born in this month. Republican consular elections were often held in July late Republic. Caesar was born on 12 or 13 July disputed: sources differ on the day; after his death the month was renamed in his honour by a law of Mark Antony in 44 BC per Macrobius 1.12.34.
Military
Peak campaign season. On 15 July the equites paraded through Rome (transvectio equitum), revived by Augustus per Suetonius, Aug. 38.
Festivals & religion
Ludi Apollinares (6–13 July), founded during the war with Hannibal; the Poplifugia (5 July); the Lucaria in sacred groves (19 and 21 July); Neptunalia (23 July) with leafy shelters against the heat per Varro and Festus.
Daily life
Water was precious: Rome's aqueducts fed public fountains, from which most people carried water up the stairs of their apartment blocks per Frontinus, De aquis. Food spoiled quickly; those without kitchens bought cooked food at taverns and street stalls. Graffiti at Pompeii record prices for bread, wine and oil, and rents for rooms per Pompeian inscriptions. Martial jokes that he lives up three tall flights of stairs, a common lot for renters satire, Martial 1.117. The well-off escaped to villas; the poor had no such option.
Sources: Frontinus, De aquis · Suetonius, Augustus 38
Day by day
- July 1 — Egypt’s legions hail Vespasian emperor
- July 2 — Senators regain the right to appeal against the prefect of Rome
- July 3 — Constantine defeats Licinius at Adrianople
- July 4 — The Ara Pacis is vowed
- July 5 — Apollo’s games get a fixed date
- July 6 — The Capitol burns during the civil war
- July 7 — Nonae Caprotinae: the slave women’s festival; Romulus vanishes in a storm
- July 8 — Constantine at Rome: the tyrant's unlawful rescripts are void
- July 9 — Deportation for robbing the state granaries
- July 10 — The martyrs of 10 July: Felix, Philip and companions
- July 11 — The sun goes dark during Apollo’s games
- July 12 — Birthday of Julius Caesar
- July 13 — No tolls on goods for one's own use
- July 14 — Carrinas triumphs over the Gauls
- July 15 — Castor’s day and the parade of knights
- July 16 — Retired officials need permission to use the imperial post
- July 17 — No private additions spoiling public buildings in Constantinople
- July 18 — The Allia: Rome’s blackest day
- July 19 — The Great Fire of Rome breaks out
- July 20 — Hunting down the Saturiani conspirators
- July 21 — Earthquake and tsunami across the Mediterranean
- July 22 — Cicero lands at Ephesus to a crowd
- July 23 — Six horses and one carriage a day: limiting the imperial post
- July 24 — Transport workers bound to their service forever
- July 25 — Constantine proclaimed emperor
- July 26 — Synagogues protected and the Sabbath respected
- July 27 — The festival-presidency of Syria must be voluntary
- July 28 — Execution of the usurper Magnus Maximus
- July 29 — Rome's pork merchants reorganized
- July 30 — Abdon and Sennen, the Persian martyrs
- July 31 — Cicero takes up his province at Laodicea
Dicturus dominum deumque non sum.
“I am not going to call him lord and god.”