Today in
Ancient RomeHODIE · ROMA

a.d. V Id. Iun.

June 9 in Ancient Rome

Vestalia: bakers’ holiday and garlanded donkeys

A day off for the bakery donkeys

festivalRepublic & Empire (annual)

Roman calendar date

At the Vestalia, Ovid writes, loaves hung from garlanded donkeys and millstones were wreathed with flowers, as bakers honoured Vesta, goddess of the hearth.

Ecce coronatis panis dependet asellis, / et velant scabras florida serta molas.

Look, bread hangs from garlanded donkeys, and flowery wreaths veil the rough millstones.

— Ovid, Fasti 6.311–312

Background

Vesta was the goddess of the hearth, and her round temple in the Forum held the eternal flame tended by the Vestal Virgins. Ovid says the temple's roof had once been straw and its walls wickerwork in the days of King Numa per Ovid. In June the inner storeroom of the temple was opened: the Calendar of 354 marks 7 June as VESTA APERIT, "Vesta opens", and Ovid notes the sweepings were carried away on 15 June.

The Vestalia itself, on 9 June, belonged to ordinary working people. Women came barefoot to the temple with food offerings disputed. Ovid describes loaves of bread hanging from garlanded donkeys and flowery wreaths covering the rough millstones. Before ovens existed, he explains, farmers baked bread on a tile set in the embers of the hearth, so "the baker honours the hearth" and the she-ass that turns the millstones.

It is one of the most charming scenes in Ovid's calendar: a day off for the mill animals who worked hardest in Rome's bakeries, and a reminder of how much of the city's bread was ground by donkeys walking in circles. On the next day, Ovid says, the violets were stripped from the donkeys and the millstones began grinding again.

Ancient source: Ovid, Fasti 6.249–468; Calendar of 354 (7 June: VESTA APERIT; 9 June: VESTALIA) · Reference

Sources
Read moreCrassus loses the eagles at Carrhae

Crassus loses the eagles at Carrhae

The eagles lost by the Euphrates

military53 BC

Pre-reform Roman calendar

a.d. V Id. Iun. · Roman date in the pre-Julian calendar (day inferred, not written in the source)

Ovid sets the disaster of Crassus in Mesopotamia on the day of the Vestalia: near the Euphrates he lost the legionary eagles, his son, his men and finally his own life.

Crassus ad Euphraten aquilas natumque suosque / perdidit, et leto est ultimus ipse datus.

Crassus, by the Euphrates, lost the eagles, his son and his men, and last of all was himself given to death.

— Ovid, Fasti 6.465–466

Background

Marcus Licinius Crassus was the richest man in Rome and, with Pompey and Caesar, one of the three most powerful. He lacked the military glory of his partners, and in 54 BC he went east as governor of Syria hoping to win it against the Parthian empire.

In the plains of Mesopotamia near Carrhae, the Parthian general Surenas met him with horse archers and armoured cavalry. Crassus' son Publius was killed, his army was badly beaten, and Crassus himself was killed soon afterwards during a parley disputed. Ovid compresses all this into four lines placed on the Vestalia: "Crassus, near the Euphrates, lost the eagles, his army, and his son, and at the end himself as well" per Ovid.

The loss of the eagles, the sacred standards of the legions, was a deep humiliation. Ovid has Vesta herself answer the Parthians: "Why exult? You'll send the standards back; a Caesar will avenge Crassus' death." In 20 BC Augustus did recover the standards by diplomacy, and he celebrated it as a great victory. Placing Carrhae on Vesta's feast day let Ovid turn a disaster into a story with a happy, Augustan ending.

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?

Ancient source: Ovid, Fasti 6.465–468 · Reference

Sources
Read moreDeath of Nero

Death of Nero

“What an artist dies in me!”

deathAD 68

Julian date · ≈ Jun 7 on our calendar

Declared a public enemy by the Senate, Nero killed himself with a servant’s help at his freedman Phaon’s villa outside Rome. The day is reconstructed: Suetonius says he died on the anniversary of Octavia’s murder, and his age at death in Dio’s epitomators points to 9 June.

Obiit tricensimo et secundo aetatis anno, die quo quondam Octaviam interemerat.

He died in the thirty-second year of his age, on the day on which he had once killed Octavia.

— Suetonius, Nero 57

Background

By the spring of 68 the revolts of Vindex in Gaul and Galba in Spain had cost Nero the loyalty of the guard. Suetonius tells how he fled the palace at night with a few companions to the suburban villa of his freedman Phaon, between the Via Salaria and the Via Nomentana, about four miles from the city per Suetonius.

There a runner brought word that the Senate had declared him a public enemy, to be punished "in the ancestral manner". As horsemen approached to take him alive, he drove a blade into his throat with the help of his secretary Epaphroditus, after the line Suetonius made famous: "Qualis artifex pereo!" – "What an artist dies in me!" per Suetonius. He was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian house per Cassius Dio.

No ancient source writes the date. disputed Suetonius says only that he died on the day he had once had his wife Octavia killed; the 9 June date comes from modern calculation from his birthday (15 December 37) and the lifespan given in the epitome of Dio.

⚠ Uncertain date: day reconstructed from Suetonius, Nero 57 and the epitome of Dio 63.29; no source writes 9 June

Ancient source: Suetonius, Nero 47–49, 57; Cassius Dio 63.27–29 (epitome) · Reference

Sources

Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 26°/16°C (79°/61°F) · rain 25% of days

Rome in JuneHarvest meant long days for gangs of hired reapers, often seasonal migrant…

Fields & crops

Grain harvest began in the lowlands: wheat was reaped, threshed on the threshing floor and stored. Columella advises clearing the floor and preparing granaries per Columella 11.2.

Courts & law

Normal court business. As on every Kalends, interest on loans fell due on 1 June, also the day of Carna, goddess of the body's vital organs, honoured with bean porridge and bacon per Ovid, Fasti 6.101–82.

Senate & politics

No fixed political dates, but in the Republic elections were often held in summer, with candidates canvassing in whitened togas late Republic; often July.

Military

Campaigns continued; harvests in enemy territory were sometimes burned or seized to feed armies.

Festivals & religion

The Vestalia (9 June), when bakers and millers garlanded their donkeys and mill-stones and women walked barefoot to Vesta's temple; the temple was cleaned on 15 June per Ovid, Fasti 6. Fishermen's games were held across the Tiber on 7 June.

Daily life

Harvest meant long days for gangs of hired reapers, often seasonal migrant labourers, alongside enslaved workers per Varro, Rust. 1.17, on hiring free labourers for harvests. Summer heat in Rome brought fevers, probably malaria in low, marshy districts; the wealthy left for hill or seaside villas per Horace and Celsus; malaria identification modern. The poor stayed in hot, crowded insulae.

Sources: Ovid, Fasti 6 · Varro, Res Rusticae 1.17

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LATIN LINE OF THE DAY

Non est vivere, sed valere vita est.

“Life is not just being alive, but being well.”

Martial, Epigrams 6.70 · translation ours (literal)