Aestas ("summer", or "summer heat") is the Roman personification
of summer. She is mentioned by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, and She may
be his own invention. He describes Her as standing by the emerald throne of
Phoebus (the Sun-god), with the other personifications of Time such as the
Day, Month, Year, Century, and the Hours and the other Seasons, Spring, Autumn
and Winter. She is naked except for a garland of grain or wheat-sheaves in
Her hair.
According to Pliny the Elder, the Summer Solstice takes place when the Sun
is in the eighth degree of Cancer. What the Romans thought of as the first
day of Summer was considered to take place on the forty-eighth day after the
vernal equinox, which Pliny states as the day when the Sun enters the 8th
degree of Aries. (By modern figuring, the Sun enters the 1st degree of Aries
on the vernal equinox). Using the current calendar, that puts the Romans'
first day of Summer on the 7th of May. Silvius, though, considers the first
day of Summer to be the 27th of June.
Ovid's depiction of Aestas may owe something to the Greek depiction of the
Horai, the Goddesses of the Seasons. Their number varied with the place and
time of their worship, there sometimes being two, three, or four of them,
but they were generally shown as garlanded with the fruits or flowers of their
respective seasons.