Kal. Nov.
November 1 in Ancient Rome
Catiline's night attack on Praeneste foiled
politics63 BC
Pre-reform Roman calendar
Kal. Nov. · as written (pre-Julian calendar)
Cicero told the Senate that Catiline had counted on seizing the colony of Praeneste in a night attack on the Kalends of November, only to find it already guarded on the consul's orders.
Cicero · Catiline
Background
In 63 BC Lucius Sergius Catilina, a patrician who had twice failed to win the consulship, was organising a revolt. He drew support from indebted aristocrats and from veterans and farmers in Etruria crushed by debt; in Italy at the time, debt could mean losing one's land and, for the poorest, being forced into bondage-like service.
The consul Cicero, warned by informants, had troops posted in key towns. In his First Catilinarian speech, delivered in November, he taunted Catiline that he had planned to seize the strongly fortified colony of Praeneste (modern Palestrina) by a night attack on 1 November, only to find it already guarded "by my order, my garrisons, my watches" per Cicero, the speaker with every reason to present himself as the city's saviour.
The speech helped push Catiline to leave Rome for his army in Etruria. His fellow conspirators who stayed behind were arrested in early December, and Catiline himself died fighting at Pistoria in early 62 BC.
Before Caesar's reform (45 BC) the calendar had drifted from the seasons, so the real seasonal date was different; we don't give a modern equivalent. Why?
Ancient source: Cicero, In Catilinam 1.8 · Reference
Sources
Read moreIsia (festival of Isis)
Isia (festival of Isis)
festivalListed AD 354
Roman calendar date
The calendar of 354 marks the Kalends of November with the Isia, the Roman festival of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
Background
The Egyptian goddess Isis reached Italy through trade in the second century BC, and her cult became one of the most popular in the Roman world, especially among women, freedpeople and the enslaved. It offered personal devotion, initiation and the hope of protection in this life and the next. The Roman state was at first hostile: altars of Isis on the Capitol were pulled down several times in the 50s BC per Varro, quoted by Tertullian, and Tiberius expelled her worshippers in AD 19 per Josephus.
Later emperors embraced the cult. By the fourth century Isis had official festivals in the public calendar. The Calendar of 354 lists the Isia over five days, 28 October to 1 November, followed by the Hilaria ("rejoicing") on 3 November; this autumn festival re-enacted Isis searching for her murdered husband Osiris and the joy of finding him details from Plutarch's essay and Minucius Felix, not from the calendar itself. The calendar's entry is bare, so we know the date more securely than how ordinary Romans kept it.
Ancient source: Chronography of 354, calendar (Kal. Nov.: ISIA) · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 19°/12°C (66°/54°F) · rain 39% of days
Rome in NovemberFor farmers, the weeks of ploughing and sowing were long and wet.
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
All days in November →
LATIN LINE OF THE DAY
Summum nec metuas diem nec optes.
“Neither fear your last day nor long for it.”
Martial, Epigrams 10.47 · translation ours (literal)
