a.d. XIV Kal. Oct.
September 18 in Ancient Rome
Domitian assassinated
The emperor who feared the fifth hour
politicsAD 96
Julian date · ≈ Sep 16 on our calendar
Domitian was stabbed in his bedroom by the steward Stephanus and palace conspirators; Suetonius says he had dreaded the fifth hour of that day.
Occisus est XIIII. Kal. Octob. anno aetatis quadragensimo quinto, imperii quinto decimo.
He was killed on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of October, in the forty-fifth year of his age and the fifteenth of his reign.
Background
Domitian had grown suspicious and cruel, and in his last days, Suetonius says, he was full of dread. The day before he died he ordered some dates served at dinner to be kept for the next day, adding, "if I am allowed to eat them". He predicted that the moon in Aquarius would be stained with blood, and at midnight he leapt out of bed in terror per Suetonius. He had long feared the fifth hour; when he asked the time, his servants told him it was the sixth.
Relieved, he was hurrying to the bath when his chamberlain Parthenius stopped him: someone had urgent business. In his bedroom, Stephanus, steward to Domitilla, who had wrapped his left arm in bandages for days to hide a dagger, handed him a list of supposed conspirators and stabbed him in the groin as he read. Domitian fought back, struggling on the floor with Stephanus and trying to tear out his eyes with lacerated fingers, until others stabbed him seven times. The boy who tended the household gods said the dagger under the pillow had no blade.
His body was carried out on a common bier and buried by his old nurse Phyllis, who secretly mixed his ashes with those of his niece Julia.
Ancient source: Suetonius, Domitian 16–17 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 25°/16°C (77°/61°F) · rain 33% of days
Rome in SeptemberThe vintage needed extra hands; Cato explains how to contract out the harvest…
Columella
West wind or north-west wind. (De Re Rust. 11.2)
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
Hoc est vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.
“To be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice.”
Martial, Epigrams 10.23 · translation ours (literal)
