in august, ancient rome left 4 dated events: egypt's booty and the emperor's month · adrianople and the emperor who left no body · the courtesans of venus and the grape harvest. 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 opened the grape harvest. despite the cliché, it was not a day of venus: varro is emphatic that it belonged to jupiter, and it was his priest who cut the first bunch. venus came in through two side doors, and one of them lay outside the sacred boundary of the city.
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.
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