a.d. IX Kal. Oct.
September 23 in Ancient Rome
Birth of Augustus
Born before sunrise at the Ox-Heads
birth63 BC
Pre-reform Roman calendar
Gaius Octavius, the future Augustus, was born just before sunrise on the Palatine; Italian calendars kept the day as a holiday with games and sacrifices.
Background
Augustus was born in the consulship of Cicero and Gaius Antonius, a little before sunrise, in the Palatine quarter at a place called the Ox-Heads. Suetonius says a shrine to him stood there soon after his death. A young patrician convicted of adultery once pleaded before the senate for a lighter sentence on the grounds that he owned the very ground the divine Augustus had first touched at birth; the senate then consecrated that part of the house per Suetonius.
Locals at Velitrae showed a tiny room like a pantry in the family's suburban villa as his nursery. Suetonius records that people entered it only with reverence, and that a new occupant who slept there was hurled out in the night by some unknown force, found dazed in front of the door with his bedspread per Suetonius.
Once Augustus ruled, his birthday became a public festival. Calendars from Rome and Italy mark it with a holiday by decree of the senate, circus games and a sacrifice. At Narbo in Gaul the townspeople set up an altar where victims were offered on 23 September, because on that day "the good fortune of the era" had brought him forth to rule the world.
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: Suetonius, Augustus 5; Fasti Arvales, Maffeiani, Cumanum (23 September) · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 24°/16°C (75°/61°F) · rain 34% of days
Rome in SeptemberThe vintage needed extra hands; Cato explains how to contract out the harvest…
Fields & crops
Vintage season: grapes picked, trodden and pressed, must boiled down, and jars sealed. Columella details preparing vats and keeping workers fed per Columella 11.2, 12. Varro notes that the vintage falls between the autumn equinox and the setting of the Pleiades, when apples are also picked per Varro, Rust. 1.34.
Courts & law
The long Ludi Romani (5–19 Sept. in the late Republic) suspended much public business late Republic.
Senate & politics
Augustus' birthday (23 Sept.) became a public festival; under the emperors the date was marked across the empire imperial era. Under Augustus, the 23 September birthday saw games and banquets; in the province of Asia, the new year was even moved to start on that date per the Priene calendar inscription, 9 BC.
Military
Late campaigns before autumn; triumphs were sometimes held in September at the end of a war. The Ludi Romani opened with a grand procession through the Circus in which young men of military age marched on horse and on foot per Dionysius of Halicarnassus 7.72.
Festivals & religion
Ludi Romani, Rome's oldest games, for Jupiter, with the Epulum Iovis on the Ides (13 Sept.) and the consul driving a nail into the temple wall on the Ides in early times per Livy 7.3.
Daily life
The vintage needed extra hands; Cato explains how to contract out the harvest and pressing per Cato, Agr. 144–47. Workers drank lora, a thin wine from re-soaked grape skins. For tenants, the harvest decided whether rent could be paid; Pliny the Younger complains of tenants falling into arrears after bad years per Pliny, Letters 9.37.
Sources: Cato, De Agri Cultura 144–47 · Pliny the Younger, Letters 9.37
All days in September →
LATIN LINE OF THE DAY
Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura quae legis hic.
“Some are good, some middling, more are bad, of what you read here.”
Martial, Epigrams 1.16 · translation ours (literal)
