Month
Rome in August
Fields & crops
Columella marks autumn beginning around 12 August; straw and stubble were gathered, figs and early fruit picked, and vineyards readied for the vintage per Columella 11.2.
Courts & law
A quieter legal month; many elite Romans were in the countryside. Under the empire, the imperial household's slaves and freedmen kept administration running.
Senate & politics
Renamed from Sextilis in 8 BC for Augustus, who had won his greatest successes in this month, including the capture of Alexandria in 30 BC per Macrobius 1.12.35.
Military
Armies stayed in the field; disease in hot camps was often as dangerous as battle modern view based on ancient accounts.
Festivals & religion
Portunalia (17 Aug.), Vinalia Rustica (19 Aug.), Consualia (21 Aug.), Vulcanalia (23 Aug.), when small fish were offered to Vulcan to ward off fire, and Opiconsivia (25 Aug.) per Varro and Festus. On the Ides, Diana's day, enslaved people had a holiday per Festus and Plutarch.
Daily life
The hottest weeks raised the risk of fire in the dense city, especially in timber-framed insulae; Augustus set up the vigiles, a fire brigade of freedmen, in AD 6 per Suetonius and Dio. Fevers peaked in late summer and early autumn; the sick poor relied on home remedies and shrines more than on doctors modern view.
Sources: Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12 · Columella 11.2
Day by day
- August 1 — Claudius is born at Lyon on the altar’s dedication day
- August 2 — Cannae: Hannibal’s greatest victory
- August 3 — Tiberius wins in Illyricum
- August 4 — Sons of officials must take their fathers' places
- August 5 — Cicero lands at Brundisium, home from exile
- August 6 — Pope Sixtus II is executed
- August 7 — No access to any temple
- August 8 — The martyrs of 8 August at Albano and Ostia
- August 9 — Disaster at Adrianople: Valens killed by the Goths; Pharsalus: Caesar defeats Pompey
- August 10 — Altars to Ceres and Ops Augusta
- August 11 — Hadrian learns he is emperor
- August 12 — Councillors spared work for the emperor's private estates
- August 13 — Octavian’s triple triumph begins
- August 14
- August 15
- August 16 — Anyone may drag a sorcerer to court
- August 17 — Soldiers' sons unfit to bear arms go to the councils
- August 18 — The Sabine women are seized at the Consualia
- August 19 — Vinalia Rustica: a holiday for gardeners; Augustus dies at Nola: “Applaud!”
- August 20 — Death of Lucius Caesar
- August 21 — Fine for hiding workers of the imperial weaving mills
- August 22 — Timothy, martyr of Ostia
- August 23 — Volcanalia: live offerings to the fire god
- August 24 — Vesuvius erupts; Pliny the Elder sails into danger; Earthquake destroys Nicomedia; Alaric’s Goths sack Rome
- August 25 — Heretics in Africa lose a short-lived tolerance
- August 26 — Tax receipts must show name, date and amount
- August 27 — Constantius confirms the clergy's exemptions
- August 28 — Altar of Victory dedicated in the Senate House
- August 29 — Quarrymen on private land pay two tenths
- August 30 — The records against the Donatists made permanent
- August 31 — Caligula is born, and nobody agrees where
Dicturus dominum deumque non sum.
“I am not going to call him lord and god.”