a.d. XV Kal. Oct.
September 17 in Ancient Rome
Augustus declared a god
A witness swore he saw him rise
religionAD 14
Julian date · ≈ Sep 15 on our calendar
A month after Augustus died, the senate voted him the honours of a god; the Fasti Amiternini made 17 September a public holiday for it.
Nec defuit vir praetorius, qui se effigiem cremati euntem in caelum vidisse iuraret.
Nor was there lacking a man of praetorian rank who swore he had seen the image of the cremated emperor going up to heaven.
Background
Augustus died at Nola on 19 August AD 14. Suetonius describes how town magistrates carried his body by night, because of the summer heat, from Nola to Bovillae, where the equestrian order took it into Rome. The senate competed in proposing honours: a procession through the triumphal gate, the giving up of gold rings for iron ones on the day of the funeral, and even renaming September "August", since he had been born in September and died in August per Suetonius.
His body was carried on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius and burned. Suetonius adds that a man of praetorian rank swore on oath that he had seen the image of the cremated emperor going up to heaven. Leading members of the equestrian order, barefoot and in plain tunics, gathered his remains and placed them in the Mausoleum he had built between the Flaminian Way and the Tiber.
On 17 September the senate formally voted Augustus the honours of a god. From then on he was Divus Augustus, with a cult, priests and temples, and the calendar of Amiternum marked the day as a public holiday by decree of the senate.
Ancient source: Fasti Amiternini (17 September); Suetonius, Augustus 100 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 25°/17°C (77°/63°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
Hominem pagina nostra sapit.
“My page tastes of humanity.”
Martial, Epigrams 10.4 · translation ours (literal)
