in july, ancient rome left 6 dated events: the real estate chaos in ancient rome · the games of apollo in the thick of the punic war · the man who stole a month from the calendar. here is what happened, day by day.
every first of july, as historians reconstruct it, the rental contracts came due and half of rome moved house at once. fragile blocks, voracious landlords and gridlocked streets — the empire that ruled the world never tamed its own property market.
read the full entry →with hannibal loose across italy and morale broken after cannae, rome responded by founding games in honour of apollo. they were not a distraction — they were the way to convince itself that the gods were still on its side.
read the full entry →the month you see today on your phone screen was not always called july. it was renamed so that one single man —born on the 12th of july— would be impossible to forget; and along the way, caesar fixed the calendar the world still uses.
read the full entry →on an 18 july, beside the river alia, the senones broke the legions almost without a battle and left rome defenceless against the sack. the trauma ran so deep that the date was marked in black on the calendar, as the day when rome refused to fight.
read the full entry →on 19 july 64 the fire devoured rome for almost a week. nero opened his gardens and brought in grain, but the rumour won out — and the emperor found a culprit in an eastern sect. it is the first repression of christians of which we have any record.
read the full entry →every 25 july rome celebrated the furrinalia, the public feast of a goddess with her own sacred grove and priest, of whom no one remembered anything any longer. varro confessed that in his day scarcely anyone was left who could pronounce her name.
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