Today marks the traditional start of that dreaded period of summer known as the "dog days": so called because, around now, the dog star Sirius rises just before the sun in the northern hemisphere, making itself visible as the brightest star in the sky, writes Frank McNally
The phenomenon is unlikely to worry us unduly in Ireland, where "summer" is a term meteorologists use to describe the annual peak in average rain temperatures. But it worried the ancient Romans (also the modern ones, as we'll see in a moment). And it was a source of major concern to the Greeks.
The Greeks feared this period not just for its heat, but for the sickness that the heat was thought to bring with it. They saw the general desiccation of men in mid-summer as comparable to the hydrophobia - another name for rabies - from which victims of canine bites suffered.
Indeed the Roman historian Pliny the Elder warned of increased attacks by rabid dogs in July and August and suggested, bizarrely, that feeding them chicken manure reduced the risks. But according to the Greeks, a man didn't have to be attacked by a dog to be vulnerable. This is because he faced an even bigger risk in high summer, from the increased wantonness of women.
No less a person than Aristotle wrestled with the ancient question of why, during the hottest days of the year, women become more interested in sexual intercourse, at the very time that men are incapacitated.
He needn't have wondered. The answer had been provided centuries earlier by Hesiod, whose theory of the humours argued that men are naturally hot and dry, while women are innately wet and cold. The heat of the dog days therefore brought the female condition into equilibrium - piquing sexual appetite - while simultaneously enfeebling the male.
How this theory applies to a climate such as Ireland's is a moot point. If they were hot and dry at the start of June, Irish men should be well balanced by now. As for Irish women, many of them must be waterlogged.
But the belief that men should avoid sex during the dog days affected even northern countries and lasted into relatively modern times. For example, The Husbandman's Practice - an English publication from 1729 - advised total abstinence from women for the duration, explaining: "All this time the heat of the sun is so fervent and violent that men's bodies at midnight sweat as at midday; and if they be hurt, they be more sick than at any other time, yea very near dead."
I mentioned the modern Romans a moment ago. And it seems that their concerns about high summer were increasing this year even before the dog star started foaming at the mouth.
An alarming picture on the front of the International Herald Tribune last week showed the aftermath of what is now a typical night out in Rome's Trastevere region, featuring a prostrate tourist on the steps of a monument, surrounded by empty beer bottles.
Clearly the man had been engaged in intensive anti-desiccation activities, to no avail. The accompanying article also mentions the tradition of local bars holding "ladies' night" - which, as we have seen, is at least as dangerous to the male constitution at this time as alcohol. But thanks to low-cost air travel, scenes like the one depicted are now apparently commonplace in the eternal city.
Trastevere has become Rome's answer to Temple Bar, causing angry locals to protest that they don't remember asking the question. Either way, the influx of beer-swilling tourists is now the biggest threat to the city since the Vandals. The situation is so bad that residents have taken to hanging white sheets from their balconies, according to the IHT. Happily, this is a gesture of protest rather than surrender.
The dies caniculares, as the old Romans called them, are feared especially in journalism, and not because of the heat and dryness. No. Even in Ireland, this is the time of year when the desiccation of the news diary starts to become a big problem.
As a media outlet crosses the annual zero-degrees line of latitude that is July 1st, heading for the south seas of autumn, it must first pass through that equatorial phenomenon known as the doldrums. This is that period - sometimes July, sometimes August - when not a puff of controversy swells the newspaper's sails, and even rations of ship's biscuit (stuff that was baked earlier) begin to run low.
Popular wisdom holds that "no news is good news". But a journalist is about as likely to utter this adage as a sailor is to shoot an albatross. And even when none of the crew offends against the superstition, news editors in high summer can start to acquire the mad, haunted look of ancient mariners.
Not for nothing has the relationship between man and dog come to define the nature of the business. In a quote now part of the catechism at journalism schools, a 19th-century editor of the New York Sun summed it up thus: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." Incidents of human-on-canine biting remain rare, it is true. And yet this is no reason for either species to become complacent. To this day a dog who saunters past a newspaper office in July or August is, in the opinion of many journalists, just asking for it.