ante diem xiii kalendas sextilias

• ludi Victoriae Caesaris (day 1) — games instituted by/adjusted by Octavian to honour his adoptive father shortly after the latter’s death (possibly moving Caesar’s own ludi Veneris Genetricis)
• 64 A.D. — the Great Fire of Rome (day 3)
• 356 B.C. — birth of Alexander the Great (according to one reckoning)
• 1304 — birth of Petrarch

ante diem vi idus quinctilias

• ludi Apollinares (day 5)
• 70 A.D. — burning of the Second Temple in Jerusalem
• 138 A.D. — death of the emperor Hadrian; dies imperii of Antoninus Pius
• ca 150 A.D. — martyrdom of the Seven Holy Brothers (cf below … something’s not right)
• ca 165 A.D. — martyrdom of Philip

ante diem vii idus quinctilias

ludi Apollinares (day 4)

597 B.C. — date for Thales’ eclipse (or so it was thought in several 19th century (and earlier) sources

118 A.D. — Hadrian finally arrives in Rome as emperor

ante diem viii idus iulias

• ludi Apollinares (day 3) — games instituted in 212 B.C. after consulting the Sybilline books during a particularly bad stretch in the Punic Wars; four years later they became an annual festival in honour of Apollo
• rites in honour of Vitula, possibly honouring a divinity who supposedly presided over victory celebrations … or perhaps she had something to do with heifers
• 1851 — birth of Arthur Evans (excavator of Knossos)

nonae iuliae

• ludi Apollinares (day 2)– games instituted in 212 B.C. after consulting the Sybilline books during a particularly bad stretch in the Punic Wars; four years later they became an annual festival in honour of Apollo

• feriae Ancillarum — a festival in honour of the “maids” who helped save Rome from a Latin attack in the days after the Gallic sack
• rites in honour of Juno Caprotina — rites possibly associated with the above in which Latin women offered sacrifices to Juno Caprotina under wild fig trees (the branches of the tree were also somehow used … the old canard of ‘fertility ritual’ is usually mentioned in this context)
• rites in honour of Consus in the Circus Maximus — ‘public priests’ offered a sacrifice to Consus (possibly in a role of presiding over grain which has been stored underground) at his underground altar (was it uncovered for this?) at the first turning point in the Circus
• eighth century B.C.? — death/disappearance of Romulus (traditional, obviously)
• 267 B.C. — dedication of the Temple of Pales (and associated rites thereafter)
• 175 A.D. — the future emperor Commodus dons his toga virilis
• c. 200 A.D. — martyrdom of Pantaenus (a Stoic!)
• 1586 — birth of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (amasser of the Arundelian Marbles)