pr. Kal. Nov.
October 31 in Ancient Rome
Romulus Augustulus proclaimed emperor
politicsAD 475
Julian date · ≈ Nov 1 on our calendar
His father Orestes, then in control of Italy, raised the young Romulus as Western emperor. He was the last Western emperor; Odoacer deposed him in 476.
Background
By 475 the Western empire had shrunk to Italy and a few fragments of Gaul and Dalmatia. Real power lay with the generals who commanded its largely barbarian armies. One of them, Orestes, a Roman from Pannonia who had once served as secretary to Attila, drove the emperor Julius Nepos out of Ravenna.
Orestes did not take the throne himself. Instead he proclaimed his young son Romulus, whom people nicknamed "Augustulus", the "little Augustus". The boy was a figurehead; Orestes governed. The day comes from an Italian consular chronicle, the Fasti Vindobonenses priores, which says that "in that year Augustulus was raised emperor at Ravenna by the patrician Orestes, his father, on the day before the Kalends of November" per Fasti Vindobonenses priores; the Anonymus Valesianus confirms the elevation but gives no day.
The regime lasted less than a year. In 476 the soldiers in Italy demanded land, Orestes refused, and they rallied to the officer Odoacer, who killed Orestes and deposed Romulus. Odoacer spared the boy and sent him to live in Campania on a pension per Anonymus Valesianus. He sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople. Historians have long treated 476 as the conventional "end" of the Western Roman Empire, though for people living in Italy daily life, law and the Senate carried on much as before.
Ancient source: Fasti Vindobonenses priores 617 (prid. kl. Nov.); Anonymus Valesianus 8.37 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 19°/12°C (66°/54°F) · rain 38% of days
Rome in OctoberOctober ended the vintage and the olive harvest began.
Fields & crops
End of the vintage and start of the olive harvest; autumn ploughing and the first sowing of grain began after the rains per Columella 11.2. Cato lists rations for a farm's enslaved workers: more bread when they dig or tend vines, less in winter per Cato, Agr. 56.
Courts & law
Courts busy again after the summer; many wealthy Romans returned to the city. In the late Republic, trials resumed in force after the summer and autumn games, and many famous speeches were given in these months late Republic.
Senate & politics
Under the empire, Domitian briefly renamed October 'Domitianus' after himself; the name vanished after his murder per Suetonius, Dom. 13.
Military
The campaign season closed. The Armilustrium (19 Oct.) purified the army's weapons, and the October Horse sacrifice (15 Oct.) was dedicated to Mars per Varro and Festus.
Festivals & religion
Meditrinalia (11 Oct.), tasting the new wine as medicine; Fontinalia (13 Oct.), garlanding springs and wells; October Horse; Armilustrium per Varro, De Lingua Latina 6.21–22. The October Horse: after a race on the Campus Martius, the right-hand horse of the winning chariot was sacrificed to Mars, and residents of the Sacred Way and the Subura fought over its head per Festus.
Daily life
October ended the vintage and the olive harvest began. On farms, enslaved workers and hired day labourers pressed grapes and stored wine; Cato lists the rations of bread and cheap wine (lora) given to a farm's enslaved workforce per Cato, Agr. 56–57. In the city, the sailing season was closing, so grain had to be stockpiled before winter storms made sea transport dangerous.
Sources: Varro, De Lingua Latina 6 · Columella 11.2 · Cato, De Agri Cultura 56–57
All days in October →
LATIN LINE OF THE DAY
Quod sis esse velis nihilque malis.
“Wish to be what you are, and prefer nothing else.”
Martial, Epigrams 10.47 · translation ours (literal)
