a.d. III Non. Sept.
September 3 in Ancient Rome
Naulochus: Sextus Pompey defeated
Asleep at the start of the battle
military36 BC
Julian date · ≈ Sep 1 on our calendar
Two calendars mark 3 September for Octavian’s naval victory in Sicily; Suetonius says he fell so deeply asleep at the start that friends had to wake him.
inter Mylas et Naulochum superavit
He defeated him between Mylae and Naulochus.
Background
Sextus Pompey, a son of Pompey the Great, held Sicily with a strong fleet and cut off Rome's grain ships, causing a famine. Suetonius says the war dragged on: Octavian twice lost fleets to storms, even in summer, and was forced by popular clamour to patch up a peace for a while.
Finally Octavian built a new fleet and obtained twenty thousand freed slaves to row it. He created the Julian harbour at Baiae by letting the sea into the Lucrine and Avernus lakes, and drilled his crews there all winter. Then, Suetonius writes, he defeated Pompey between Mylae and Naulochus, although just as the battle began he fell into so deep a sleep that his friends had to wake him to give the signal per Suetonius. Antony later mocked him for lying on his back gazing at the sky until Agrippa had routed the enemy. After an earlier storm, Octavian was said to have declared he would win in spite of Neptune.
The victory reopened the sea lanes that fed Rome. Two Italian calendars later marked the day with a public holiday and thanksgiving at all the couches of the gods.
Ancient source: Fasti Arvales and Amiternini (3 September); Suetonius, Augustus 16 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 27°/18°C (81°/64°F) · rain 23% 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)
