Around this time in 2015 this post saw the light of day. Given the recent Heat Dome which has affected much of the US, it seemed appropriate to republish, and I thnak our Fearless Leader for his courteous acquiescence. I have made a few modest additions, and a well deserved screed in the next paragraph.

Hesiod was lucky. He didn’t have to deal with global warming and the human contribution to same. Just a few methane belching cows. Unlike a highway filled with gas guzzling SUVs or  coal fired electricity plants.

“But when the artichoke flowers, and the chirpy cicada sits in a tree and pours down his shrill song endlessly from under his wings in the season of wearisome heat, then goats are plumpest and wine the best ever; women are sluttiest but that does men no good, greatly weakened as they are in heads and knees from the Dog Star’s searing heat; for good measure their skin is wickedly dry.”

Hesiod, Works and Days, 582-88

ἦμος δὲ σκόλυμός τ᾽ ἀνθεῖ καὶ ἠχέτα τέττιξ
δενδρέῳ ἐφεζόμενος λιγυρὴν καταχεύετ᾽ ἀοιδὴν
πυκνὸν ὑπὸ πτερύγων, θέρεος καματώδεος ὥρῃ,
585τῆμος πιόταταί τ᾽ αἶγες καὶ οἶνος ἄριστος,
μαχλόταται δὲ γυναῖκες, ἀφαυρότατοι δέ τοι ἄνδρες
εἰσίν, ἐπεὶ κεφαλὴν καὶ γούνατα Σείριος ἄζει,
αὐαλέος δέ τε χρὼς ὑπὸ καύματος….

We’re in the middle of that period folks; Sirius aka The Dog Star rose in Hesiod’s era on July 17 and had high nuisance value for about a month thereafter. The Romans had a very ancient festival of the augurium canarium in that time frame; it was one of the movable feasts (feriae conceptivae) whose fluctuating dater would be fixed yearly depending on the calendar. Canarium in the festival’s name refers to both Sirius, but also the sacrifice of a dog.

[very pedantic aside: my namesake Sextus Pompeius Festus, as usual, has information on this at p. 358 Lindsay. Never translated into English, although once into French. Don’t go there. Nothing good happens when you go there. Unless you make a living from this sort of thing]

Notice that Hesiod a serious attitude problem about women here and passim. And see my colleague’s post on misogyny.

The ancients, as usual, knew the story. The hottest I have ever been was August in the Roman Forum. But I wasn’t old enough to know about, or care about, the effect on women and men.

About this post’s title…

The Festus passage:

Red Dogs [Rutilae canes] that is, dogs not far from the actual color red. According to Ateius Capito they are sacrificed in the “sacrifice of the dog” in order to ward off the Dog Star’s ferocity from the crops.

This was one of the feriae conceptivae or movable feasts, set by the pontiffs in consultation with the augurs. Don’t know about movable feasts aside from Hemmingway? Consider Easter as a prime example.

This may be connected with the Dog Days of summer, which has a substantial presence in folklore. Dogs were reputed to have been especially frisky then. Whether connected with the classical information remains unclear. On this, and movable feasts, see the wonderful The Oxford Companion to the Year (Oxford, 1999).

Although USA people talk of red dogs or red cats, the actual color is more like ginger; in the UK they tend to be called “ginger” rather than “red”.

Francesco Filelfo, Letter to Lorenzo Medici (Part XXII):

“But since I seem to have shown at more than sufficient length that Latin speech was that which, not being corrupted, was common to both the learned and the unlearned alike, in which there was room neither for solecism nor for barbarism, and which had no admixture of foreign or inept speech, or of excessively antiquated or uncustomary diction, I should be content to have proved the same with two or three examples.

Sallust, whom they would have as the most observant of uncorrupted Latin, left this behind in his history on the Jugurthine War: ‘There Jugurtha was with the majority. Then, when he learned of Bochus’ arrival, he turned to the infantry and said in Latin (for he had learned to speak in Numantia) that our men are fighting in vain, and Marius had killed himself shortly before with his own hand.’

Livy, in relating the battle of Tullus Hostilius against the Fidenates, wrote, ‘The terror transferred to the enemies, and they had heard it spoken with a clear voice, and a great part of the Fidenates, and those colonial citizens who had been added to the Romans, knew Latin.’

To this, the same Livy adds in his seventh book on the Second Punic War: ‘Furthermore, Hannibal approached the city at about the fourth quarter of the night. The first men in the line were Roman deserters, and had Roman arms. When they came to the gates, they all spoke Latin, woke up the guards, and ordered them to open the gate.’ Now who will doubt from these examples that it was that Latin language, which Romans spoke as a common and daily language?”

Sed quoniam iam satis ac super mihi videor ostendisse locutionem latinam esse eam, quae non depravata doctis erat indoctisque communis, in qua nec soloecismo foret nec barbarismo locus, quaeque nihil peregrini ineptique sermonis, aut nimis etiam prisci aut inusitati haberet admixtum, idem comprobasse duobus quoque tribusve exemplis contenti simus.

Salustius, quem sincerae latinitatis observantissimum extitisse volunt, in historia de Bello Iugurthino ita reliquit scriptum: “Ibi Iugurtha cum pluribus erat. Deinde, cognito Bochi adventu, ad pedites conversus inquit latine – nam apud Numantiam loqui didicerat – nostros frustra pugnare, paulo ante Marium sua manu interfectum”.

Et Ti. Livius, in Tullii Hostilii pugna adversus Fidenatis: “Terror ad hostes transiit: et audiverant clara voce dictum, et magna pars Fidenatium, et qui coloni additi Romanis erant, latine sciebant”.

Ad haec idem Livius, libro septimo de Bello Punico secundo: “Praeterea Hannibal quarta vigilia ferme ad urbem accessit. Primi agminis erant perfugae Romanorum, et arma romana habebant. Hi, ubi ad portam est ventum, latine omnes loquentes excitant vigiles aperirique portam iubent”. Num quisquam dubitarit, vel ex huiusmodi exemplis, linguam latinam eam extitisse, qua vulgo Romani utebantur?

Et fieri nulla ratione potuisse Leonardus ait, ut latinitas hominibus indoctis foret cognita, eandemque putat esse latinitatem ac litteraturam, adducitque in medium supellex et alia nonnulla nomina, quae dicit declinari ab illitteratis nullo pacto per suos casus potuisse, idemque facit de verbis.