in august, ancient rome left 5 dated events: egypt's booty and the emperor's month · adrianople and the emperor who left no body · jupiter, venus and the august wine festival. here is what happened, day by day.
on 1 august 30 bce, octavian's legions enter alexandria almost without resistance. with the deaths of antony and cleopatra, the last independent hellenistic kingdom falls, and years later the senate renames a month of the calendar in his honour.
read the full entry →on 9 august 378 the emperor valens marched in person against the goths, lost two thirds of the eastern army and vanished in the slaughter. ammianus marcellinus records two versions of his end, and in neither does the body turn up.
read the full entry →on 19 august rome kept the vinalia rustica. festus records the day as a festival of jupiter, the god whose priest opened the grape harvest; varro says the festival was instituted on account of venus, who has the care of gardens. that it was also the day of the courtesans, before the venus outside the gates of the city, is an inference of this page: ovid puts it on 23 april.
read the full entry →on 24 august 410 alaric's visigoths came in through the salarian gate and sacked rome for three days. it was the first time in eight hundred years that a foreign army had taken the city, and the ancient world understood that nothing lasts forever.
read the full entry →on 28 august 430 the bishop of hippo died in the third month of a vandal siege. the man who tells us was inside the walls: possidius, his friend of almost forty years, shut himself in for the whole blockade.
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