August 15
On the value of dates.
August 15 could mean the assumption of Mary. But it wasn’t born that way. The date is yet another example of how the Catholic Church annexed meaningful rituals—brought into the fold, metaphorically and physically by the Romans.
In truth, the older, deeper meaning is the one that connects us to the earth.
And that connection we’ve lost has value.
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Ferragosto (August 15) was a great exercise in soft power. From the Latin Feriae Augusti, ‘the rest of Augustus.’ The whole month—August—takes its name from Octavian Augustus, first leader of Rome’s glorious Empire, a demi-god to his subjects.
To Italians, it’s the symbol of summer holidays and the beginning of the end of summer.
August was called sextilis, the sixth month of the year. The new year began two months after what we know as January. Julius Caesar had made quintilis, the fifth month (our July) his own, calling it Iulius.
Octavian was Julius Caesar’s grandnephew and chosen heir. So it was natural for him to claim the following month. But beyond the semantics hides a much deeper—and more meaningful—reason why we call the month August. As for the date, that’s where the soft power comes in.
August 15 was a celebration (13-15 August, starting on the 1st) of Octavian Augustus’ victory over the East. Had Anthony won, the capital would have become Alexandria (and maybe today Italian wouldn’t exist.)
But as he looked at the sea towards the East, Octavian recited to Agrippa the dire consequences of a defeat. It would be Agrippa to win at Actium—in a battle that wasn’t much one, but created symbols and icons.
A door to the East.
Octavian unleashed his own propaganda, very modern and widespread.
Cleopatra was of Greek blood, but she was portrayed as very oriental, interpreter of clumsy traditions that Octavian (future divine) had swept away. Monstrous gods in Egypt, monstra deum that the clever Virgil described as devouring beasts.
Rome was the light, the beacon for Horace and Maecenas, Alexandria the nightmare.
The poems did the rest. Aeneas is Augustus, the princeps, the imperator, the divine who reconquered his land from the East (like Octavian.) This is the metaphor of the Aeneid, Rome’s own epic poem that explained the origin of the empire.
Historians called the war Bellum Alexandrinum. Octavian spared the population and entered the city after Arius Didymus, a stoic thinker (today’s spin doctor), to demonstrate that the thought of the Italics surpassed the weapons in value.
With this war Octavian becomes ‘first citizen,’ he exercises the imperator, the power, alone. But Rome formally remained a Republic. Which is where the creation of festivities was a political act.
Augustus placed himself in a position of semi-divine power, but left untouched the role and relevance of the Senate. Aware that Rome would not have accepted a return to monarchic rule, he bypassed the issue—he stepped up the ladder to a god.
The emperor wasn’t enlightened—he was rather ferocious and ruthless—but he created a political scheme so strong to resist mediocre emperors. And his divine lineage was further cemented by Virgil in his Aeneid, where he traced Augustus’ origins all the way back to Venus, the goddess of Beauty and mother of Aeneas.
We’re left with August to tell us about Actium and the beginning of the most significant Empire (together with the Chinese) in history. The Empire has never fallen. It’s translated into the transmission of knowledge—from law to the calendar in its foundations, Rome is eternal as Virgil wrote.
As a despot he understood the power of language and symbols. He gave economic tranquility to his intellectuals and poets who made ‘cultural cultivation’ eternal.
The Feriae Augusti were instituted in 18 BC, strongly associated also to the Consualia, the Roman holiday dedicated to Consus, god of fertility and soil. The Consualia also celebrated the end of agricultural work in the fields—a time of rest for farmers.
Undoubtedly, the connection between Augustus and the Divine was strengthened further by the connection between an already known, traditional divine celebration, and his own newly-instituted holiday.
Workers celebrated the end of work in the fields on August 1st. But there were several other days of celebration/rest in the month, including the 13th. Like many pagan celebrations through the process called obliteration, it became a Catholic holiday.
Catholic holidays are nearly all former pagan holidays whose meaning has been changed. The Assumption of Mary into Heaven as a dogma was established by Pius XII in 1950.
If you’d like to partake of the Roman intrigues at the hatching of the empire, I recommend I, Claudius. Made in 1976 for BBC Television, the series is a superb adaptation of Robert Graves’ 1934 novel I, Claudius and its 1935 sequel Claudius the God.
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Inspired by a thread by Marco Pugliese on LinkedIn.