a.d. IV Kal. Oct.
September 28 in Ancient Rome
Murder of Pompey
Killed the day before his birthday
death48 BC
Pre-reform Roman calendar
Fleeing after Pharsalus, Pompey was stabbed as he stepped ashore in Egypt; Velleius says he died the day before his birthday.
duodesexagesimum annum agentis pridie natalem ipsius vitae fuit exitus
In his fifty-eighth year, on the day before his birthday, his life came to its end.
Background
After his defeat at Pharsalus, Pompey the Great sailed to Egypt, hoping for help from the young king Ptolemy, whose father he had once supported. The king's advisers decided it was safer to kill him. Plutarch says they sent a small boat with the Egyptian commander Achillas and Septimius, a Roman who had once served under Pompey, who greeted him in Latin as imperator per Plutarch.
Pompey's wife Cornelia watched from the galley. As he took the hand of his freedman Philip to rise from the boat, Septimius stabbed him from behind, and others drew their swords. Plutarch writes that Pompey drew his toga over his face with both hands and endured the blows, groaning only a little. His killers cut off his head and left the body naked on the shore.
Philip washed the body in sea water, wrapped it in his own tunic and searched the beach for wood, finding only the rotten planks of a small fishing boat. An old Roman who had served under Pompey in his youth joined him, asking to share in the duty to "the greatest general among the Romans". Velleius notes the bitter timing: the man who had won three consulships and three triumphs died the day before his birthday disputed.
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: Velleius Paterculus 2.53; Pliny, Natural History 37.13; Plutarch, Pompey 79–80 · Reference
Sources
☁ Rome today (1991–2020 avg): 23°/15°C (73°/59°F) · rain 30% of days
Rome in SeptemberThe vintage needed extra hands; Cato explains how to contract out the harvest…
Columella
Signals a storm. (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
Ille sapit quisquis, Postume, vixit heri.
“The wise man, Postumus, is whoever lived yesterday.”
Martial, Epigrams 5.58 · translation ours (literal)
