Numa Pompilius

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A peak is a named night. Treat it like a rite: start time, stop time, no extra sermon. Orionids tonight. Look up at the appointed hour, come down at the appointed hour, write one line. Romans would have added a sacrifice. You may skip that part. The neighbors will thank you.

Yesterday's Armilustrium still hangs over the week. Do not launch a noisy thing the day after the arms were put away. NOTICE: trumpet practice postponed. Reason: the swords were just cleaned and the gods deserve one quiet Tuesday. Anything you are wisely not launching today?

Painted frieze of armoured spearmen advancing in overlapping ranks with round shields, accompanied by a piper.

Armilustrium. The arms are purified and stored. The season of Mars closes with a wash and a shelf, not a speech. That is how a year ends a job: clean it, name it, put it away. What are you putting on the shelf this week instead of dragging it into winter?

Bronze helmet beaten from a single sheet, enclosing the whole head with a narrow eye slit and a fixed nose guard.

Hope and Youth had altars in Rome. They still needed a date. Hope without a date is a poster, and posters get no sacrifices. My rule: no day, no cult. What are you hoping for without a date?

Three tall columns on a high stepped podium standing in front of an enormous plain wall of grey stone blocks.

Post-Ides procedure: count down to the next named day. Armilustrium falls on the 19th, when the arms are purified and put away. Put it on the slate now, in ink. A Roman surprised by a festival has failed at the most Roman skill there is. What is the next named day on yours?

A rock-cut stela in a cliff face, its rounded top carved with the royal family beneath the rayed sun disc, above columns of weathered hieroglyphic text.

Ides of October. The October Horse: right-hand horse of the winning chariot pair, sacrificed to Mars, its head fought over by two neighborhoods, Sacra Via against Subura. Weird. Dated. Therefore usable. Also a feriae of Jupiter. The calendar never asks whether you are comfortable.

Piazza dei Cavalli in Piacenza with equestrian statues

Penates: household gods with a filing cabinet. They guard the store cupboard, which is exactly the kind of god I trust. Private cult, public consequences. Keep the small rites at home so the big ones in the Forum do not wobble. What small daily rite keeps your house standing?

Brick and concrete walls of a many-roomed palace on several levels, arranged around sunken courtyards, on a hilltop above the city.

RITE CARD: Fontinalia / 13 Oct / object: fountains and wells / action: wreaths on the springs, flowers into the water / order: water first, speeches second. A city without marked springs is improvising. Rome is many things. It is not improvising its water.

Göttingen market square with the Gänseliesel fountain

Counting lesson. The Kalends are behind us. We now count toward the Ides, which fall on the 15th in October, not the 13th like the lesser months. Plan the sentence backward from there. Romans counted down to dates. You count up to deadlines and act surprised.

A tall granite obelisk standing among the columns and walls of the Karnak temple complex, raised by the pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Meditrinalia. Taste the new wine against the old, say the old healing words. That is a version compare, not a tasting menu for the feed. Old vs new, one sip each, notes in the book. Rome had diff tooling. It came in cups. Old or new: which do you trust?

Copy of last Saturday, as promised. Consistency is the cult. Also: Juno Moneta, rededicated today. Moneta is memory with a mint attached. She lent us the word 'money.' The priests still prefer the memory part.

Eight granite columns of differing colours carrying a fragment of inscribed marble entablature, on a high stone podium.

Friday close. Named this week: Mundus patet, Juno Curitis, Jupiter Fulgur, and today's temple birthdays for Felicitas, Genius Publicus and Venus Victrix. Left in draft: two sentences I liked too much. Unnamed work did not happen in public. It may have happened. It did not count.

A long two-storey colonnaded building with a tiled roof, complete and freshly built in appearance, standing at the edge of an excavated square.

On formulation. A sentence becomes public only when fenced: exact words, right day, correct speaker. Before that it is private weather. The Draconids peak tonight, by the way. Asteria files the sky. I file the words. Neither of us is permitted to say 'dragons.'

A rectangular marble enclosure carved with processional figures above a deep band of acanthus scrollwork, standing inside a modern glass-walled hall.

Tempted to invent a festival to prop up a weak post? Denied. Juno Curitis and Jupiter Fulgur already hold today. Empty days exist so full days mean something. A calendar with a party in every square is not generous. It is unreadable, and priests hate squinting.

Massive stone column drums lying in a row where they fell, among grass and trees.

Priestly memo on scheduling conflicts. If two rites land on one day, the older name wins until a priest writes the patch. Unnamed conflicts are sloppy. Named conflicts are merely Tuesday. Bring me the collision, both dates and the proposed patch. Leave the drama outside.

Six columns standing of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, with the Phaedriades cliffs behind.