September 2

Ptolemy XV Caesarion was probably elevated to rule alongside his mother Cleopatra VII at the beginning of a new Egyptian regnal year in 44 BC. Christopher Bennett’s Ptolemaic chronology equates 1 Thoth of Cleopatra’s ninth regnal year with September 2, 44 BC. Caesarion’s elevation placed him formally within the last ruling generation of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the Macedonian Greek royal house that had governed Egypt since the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests.

On September 2, 31 BC, the fleets of Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra met off Actium on the western coast of Greece. Octavian’s victory broke Antony and Cleopatra’s strategic position and became one of the decisive events in the transition from the Roman Republic to the Augustan order. The battle also reshaped the local Greek landscape. Octavian later founded Nicopolis, the ‘City of Victory,’ opposite Actium and revived the Actian Games to commemorate his success.

John IV, known as John the Faster, died in Constantinople on September 2, AD 595 after serving as patriarch of the imperial city since 582. A native of Constantinople, he had served among the clergy of Hagia Sophia before becoming patriarch. His tenure is especially remembered for the controversy surrounding the title ‘ecumenical patriarch.’ His death gives the September 2 timeline a late-antique endpoint and shows how the Greek-speaking capital remained a major religious and political center centuries after the Hellenistic age.