Month
Rome in November
Fields & crops
Main sowing of wheat and beans; Columella marks winter's start around 10 November and advises finishing sowing by the Kalends of December per Columella 11.2.
Courts & law
The Plebeian Games (4–17 Nov.) closed courts on many days; legal business resumed in late November late Republic.
Senate & politics
Elections for the next year's magistrates were sometimes delayed into autumn in troubled years; Cicero's First Catilinarian was delivered in November 63 BC.
Military
Sailing largely stopped from around 11 November per Vegetius, a late source; armies moved into winter quarters.
Festivals & religion
Ludi Plebeii with the Epulum Iovis on the Ides; in late antiquity the Isia of Isis (28 Oct.–1 Nov.) and the start of the Brumalia (24 Nov.) per the Chronography of 354.
Daily life
For farmers, the weeks of ploughing and sowing were long and wet. In Rome, the Plebeian Games brought free shows, but a holiday meant no pay for day labourers. With sea traffic stopped, city grain prices depended on what had been stored before winter.
The poor lived in crowded apartment blocks (insulae), where upper floors had no water or heating and braziers caused fires; Juvenal mocks the risk of collapse and fire satire, Juvenal 3.
Sources: Columella 11.2 · Chronography of 354 · Juvenal, Satire 3
Day by day
- November 1 — Catiline's night attack on Praeneste foiled; Isia (festival of Isis)
- November 2
- November 3 — Death of Constantius II
- November 4 — Ludi Plebeii (Plebeian Games), Nov 4–17
- November 5
- November 6 — Julian made Caesar
- November 7
- November 8 — Birth of Nerva; Constantius II made Caesar
- November 9 — Lateran Basilica dedicated (traditional date)
- November 10 — Theodosius I returns to Constantinople
- November 11 — Conference of Carnuntum
- November 12
- November 13 — Epulum Iovis; Birth of Augustine of Hippo
- November 14 — Theodosius II orders surviving temples destroyed
- November 15
- November 16 — Birth of Tiberius
- November 17 — Birth of Vespasian; Death of Valentinian I
- November 18 — Law against the followers of John Chrysostom
- November 19
- November 20 — Diocletian proclaimed emperor; Diocletian's twentieth anniversary
- November 21 — Hadrian at the Colossi of Memnon
- November 22 — Valentinian II proclaimed Augustus
- November 23 — Constantius II bans night-time sacrifices
- November 24 — Theodosius I enters Constantinople; Brumalia begins (BRVMA in the Calendar of 354)
- November 25 — Sarmatian Games begin
- November 26 — Arians expelled from Constantinople's churches
- November 27 — Death of Horace; Second Triumvirate legally established
- November 28 — Rome's old monuments get their funding back
- November 29 — Feast of the martyr Saturninus
- November 30 — Birth of Domitia Faustina
Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura quae legis hic.
“Some are good, some middling, more are bad, of what you read here.”