This Day in Ancient History: kalendas octobres

kalendas octobres

• rites in honour of Fides on the Capitoline — these involved a procession of the flamines in a “two horse hooded carriage” to the shrine. The flamines had to bind themselves up as far as their fingers as a symbolic gesture that fides (good faith) had to be kept.
• rites associated with Juno Sororia at the tigillum — although a number of false etymologies associated this ritual of passing under a beam (the tigillum) with the tale of Horatius murdering his sister, it is more likely originally some sort of ‘coming of age’ ritual for Roman girls
• 331 B.C. — Battle of Gaugamela (one suggested date)
• 208 A.D. (?) — birth of the future emperor Severus Alexander