In the Julian calendar, the 24th of June coincided with the summer solstice. The original date of midsummer’s was probably the 23rd. Romans, however, ignore the culmination of the daylight and hence the beginning of its decrease. This is a ritual act that is intended to mask and symbolically deny the astronomical event of which they were otherwise completely aware. The sun’s ‘apogee’ is apparently recorded by Philocalus as the annae sacrumi for the 18th. Ovid puts the sun’s entry into the sign of Cancer for the 19th. A temple to an otherwise unknown figure, Summanus, was dedicated in the Circus Maximus on the 20th. Verrius Flaccus and Augustine consider the possibility of Summanus as a nocturnal Jupiter and lord of the fulgor or lightning bolt. But this same Latin word – especially when used in the genitive and in connection with the sun – suggests simply ‘brightness’. The name of the deity appears to derive from summa (‘the highest place’, ‘summary’) or from summa + manus (‘the supreme dawn’). The summanalia are mentioned by Festus as round or wheel-shaped cakes that are associated with this day.

On the 24th, one or more temples were dedicated to Fortuna. Possibly originally a dawn or sun goddess, the wheel as a possible solar-symbol is associated with the deity. The suggestion is that the turning wheel of Fortune links to the turning point of the sun. The Fasti Venusini list the words solstitium confec for the 26th, and Ovid mentions the 27th as the founding day for sanctuaries to the lares viales (lares of the road) and to Jupiter Stator. Quirinus in colle received a temple that was dedicated on the 29th.

While the various solstice associations throughout this duration are suggestive of the calendrical vagaries that had developed by the late Republic and which led Caesar to his reform of the calendar, the notion that the 23rd may have been the original solstitial date is suggested by that date being the mid-point between the nefasti periods of June and July.