Some thoughts on Ferragosto, Simón Bolivar, and the Plebeian Secession.

Today is Ferragosto, quite the most somnolent day of the Italian calendar. I remember working during my first summer as a guide with no control over my calendar. In that distant—prelapsarian—August of two thousand and one I took the work I was given. I had just turned twenty-four and spoke barely any Italian. There was not a soul I knew left in town, nor even a coffee bar open. I may be misremembering but I swear tumbleweed rolled through the streets.

Testaccio Market, 11am, 17 August 2023

There were no social media or streaming services so I worked, sweated, and read under a ceiling fan in Trastevere in a sort of acute loneliness, rendered delicious by its finite nature. My greatest extravagance was buying novels at the international Feltrinelli bookshop at Piazza della Repubblica. Central Rome didn’t really have supermarkets then and all the alimentari were closed so I had to do my shopping in the supermarket under Termini station.

Testaccio Market, 11am, 17 August 2023

Tradition says that a holiday was established by Rome’s first emperor in 18 BCE as a break following the harvest, the Feriae Augusti (holidays of Augustus) is often considered the world’s oldest observed public holiday. Despite its Christianisation as the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (and a shift from the beginning to the middle of the month) it maintains the ancient name.