Id. Sept.
September 13 in Ancient Rome
The Capitoline temple and the year-nail
A nail a year in Jupiter’s temple
religion509 BC
Pre-reform Roman calendar
idibus Septembribus · as written (pre-Julian calendar)
By tradition the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol was dedicated on the Ides of September; Livy cites an old law that the chief magistrate drive a nail there on this day.
Lex vetusta est, priscis litteris verbisque scripta, ut qui praetor maximus sit idibus Septembribus clavum pangat
There is an ancient law, written in archaic letters and words, that whoever is the chief magistrate should drive a nail on the Ides of September.
Background
Plutarch tells the story of the dedication of the great temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol in the first year of the Republic tradition. The consul Horatius stood holding the doorpost on the Ides of September, about to speak the words of dedication, when Marcus, brother of his rival Publicola, cried out that the consul's son lay dead in the camp. Horatius, unmoved, replied that they could cast out the dead wherever they liked, and finished the ceremony. The news was false per Plutarch.
Livy preserves a related custom. An ancient law, written in archaic letters and words, ordered that whoever was chief magistrate should drive a nail on the Ides of September. It was fixed into the right side of the temple, toward the shrine of Minerva. Because writing was rare in those times, Livy says, the nails were said to have served to count the years per Livy.
In 363 BC, during a plague, the senate even appointed a dictator just to drive the nail, since older people remembered that a plague had once ended after a dictator did it. For later Romans, the Ides fell in the middle of the Roman Games, held each September.
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?
⚠ Uncertain date
Ancient source: Livy 7.3; Plutarch, Publicola 14 · Reference
Sources
Read moreDeath of Titus
Death of Titus
“Only one thing I regret”
politicsAD 81
Julian date · ≈ Sep 11 on our calendar
Titus died on the Ides of September at the Sabine villa where his father had died, after just over two years as emperor; the senate praised him as never before.
Excessit in eadem qua pater villa Id. Septb. post biennium ac menses duos diesque XX. quam successerat patri, altero et quadragesimo aetatis anno.
He died in the same villa as his father, on the Ides of September, two years, two months and twenty days after succeeding his father, in the forty-second year of his age.
Background
Titus, son of Vespasian, became emperor in 79 and was remembered as one of Rome's best-loved rulers. Suetonius says that at the close of a set of public shows he wept bitterly in front of the people, then set out for the Sabine country in low spirits, because a victim had escaped while he was sacrificing and thunder had sounded from a clear sky per Suetonius.
At the first stop on the road he fell into a fever. Carried on in a litter, he is said to have drawn back the curtains, looked up at the sky and complained that his life was being taken from him undeserved, for there was nothing he had done that he regretted, except one thing. What it was he never said. Some thought he meant an affair with his brother's wife, Domitia, but she denied it on oath.
He died in the same villa as his father, two years, two months and twenty days after succeeding him, in his forty-second year. When the news spread, Suetonius writes, people mourned as if for a relative, and the senate rushed to meet before being summoned, heaping more praise on him dead than they had while he lived.
Ancient source: Suetonius, Titus 10–11 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 26°/17°C (79°/63°F) · rain 31% 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
Cras te victurum, cras dicis, Postume, semper.
“You say you'll live tomorrow, Postumus, always tomorrow.”
Martial, Epigrams 5.58 · translation ours (literal)
