Roman authors do not always clearly delineate Fall (autumnus) and Winter (hiems, bruma); they overlap completely in Late Fall (autumnus praeceps), but both are frequently treated in Latin literature, such that the one, now 100+ year old study by Keith Preston seems surprisingly sparse.1 From Cato’s advice around the season in De Agri Cultura 5.8, 155.1, and 161.3 to Justinian’s Digest, inflections of autumnus and its cognates take up no fewer than thirty-five electronic pages of the Packhard Humanities Institute’s Latin database, and this is to cover more or less exclusively those authors that predate “Christian” Latin. Perusing some of these entries is an interesting exercise in how the ancients thought about the season. It barely registers in Ennius, passing quickly between summer and winter (Aestatem autumnus sequitur, post acer hiems it; Annales 16.420). Caesar mentions that a “heavy autumn in Apulia and around Brundisium from the most wholesome regions of Gaul and Spain had tested the whole army with respect to health” (gravis autumnus in Apulia circumque Brundisium ex saluberrimis Galliae et Hispaniae regionibus omnem exercitum valetudine temptaverat; De Bello Gallico 3.2.3). Autumn recurs in Caesar as a threat to health in the Bellum Civile: “a pestilence in Italy consumed many in autumn, many left home, many were left in the mainland” (multos autumni pestilentia in Italia consumpsit, multi domum discesserunt, multi sunt relicti in continenti; Bellum Civile 3.87.2). Cicero, in his now fragmentary De Re Publica, speaks of “When in autumn the land will open itself for the harvesting of crops, in winter it relaxes for harvest, with summer ripeness some will mellow, some will parch” (Cumque autumno terra se ad concipiendas fruges patefecerit, hieme ad concipiendas relaxarit, aestiva maturitate alia mitigaverit, alia torruerit; De Re Publica 4.1, fr. 5). Cicero also translated Aratus’ Phaenomena into Latin, which speaks of the equinox: “It seems through the middle part to retain these / as much as the Milky Way was gleaming, in which autumnal and spring light again the sun / equalizes the space of light with the time of night” (Hosce inter mediam partem retinere videtur / tantus, quantus erat conlucens Lacteus orbis, / in quo autumnali atque iterum sol lumine verno / exaequat spatium lucis cum tempore noctis; Phaen. 285-288). Quintus, the more famous Cicero’s brother, also writes in his surviving carmina that “Libra unlocks the doors of Autumn and levels the day times with the star of night distributed” (Autumni reserat portas aequatque diurna / tempora nocturnis dispenso sidere Libra).2 There is not much in these texts of the deliciae Autumni, so to speak: autumn is a time of labor, harvest, and looming illness for the careless; it is a season to think about astrologically(/nomically), to be mentioned in passing while learning one’s constellations.
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