The Secret Holy Day
Ovid said nothing for this day in his Fasti,
for he never made it to the month of July.
No goddess or god of Rome was given a temple,
nor do they receive a festival, for this day.
Gaius Julius Caesar was born on the Ides, the day before,
and died on the Ides eight months and fifty-five years after.
In 112 C.E., in the fifteenth year of Trajan’s principate,
the moon was waxing crescent over the city of Rome on a Thursday.
Jupiter Optimus Maximus upon the earth, Hadrian,
would come to be his patron in education.
And in Bithynia, the infant Antinous
was not yet even two years old.
Yet, one-thousand nine-hundred and one years later
we remember the birth of Lucius Marius Vitalis:
Treískouros, father and grandfather of the Tetrad++,
learned in the arts of Hermes and Thoth.
For more on this date, see this; and for more on Vitalis himself, including the inscription which has allowed us to calculate this date, see this, this, and this.
