The Calendar
The Roman calendar originally
had ten months, beginning in March. Their names were all masculine adjectives,
agreeing with mensis, mensis masc. 3 “month”: Martius
“[the month] of Mars”, Aprīlis “of opening” (it was
thought to be derived from aperiō, aperīre, aperuī,
apertum 4 “open”, i.e. when nature opens up again; Aprīlis
was also associated with Aphrodite [= Venus]), Maius “of Maia,
the mother of the messenger-god, Mercury”, Iūnius “of Juno”,
and then the less imaginatively named Quinctīlis, Sextīlis,
September, Octōber, November, December.
Augustus renamed Quinctīlis
in honor of Julius Caesar, and subsequently Sextīlis in his
own honor. (Quinctīlis to December, as well as Aprīlis,
are 3rd decl. adjectives.) Commodus (ruled 177-192) not only renamed
Rome as Commodiāna, but also renamed each month with one of
his own titles: Amazonius (he took this title because he liked
his mistress Marcia to dress as an Amazon), Invictus, Fēlix,
Pius, Lūcius, Aelius, Aurēlius, Commodus,
Augustus (thus moving Augustus’ month to September), Herculeus,
Rōmānus, and Exsuperātōrius.
Since the original ten months
were lunar months (mensis, mensis masc. 3 “month”
and the English word “moon” are cognate), the seasons will quickly
have fallen out of harmony with the calendar, a disturbing state of
affairs for an agricultural people, who needed to observe their religious
festivals connected with sowing, harvesting etc. at the appropriate
time. Presumably months were liberally intercalated as necessary. Intercalated
months were added in February, before the start of agricultural and
military activity, and before magistrates took up their posts in March.
Spring, with the onset of a new year’s undertakings, is a more natural
beginning than mid-winter. Astrology is still today based on a cycle
beginning in spring; the sequence of horoscopes given in a newspaper,
for example, starts with Aries (March 21st – April 19th) because the
sun is in or about to enter Aries at the vernal equinox (March 19th
– March 21st).
At the end of the regal period,
in the 6th century, two further months were added: Iānuārius
and Februārius. As the name Iānuārius, i.e. “of Janus”,
the god of doors, suggests, the beginning of the year was to be moved
to January, but this did not happen till 153 BC. The derivation of
Februārius is less clear (but it seems to have no connection with
febris, febris f. 3 “fever”). The Romans linked it with
februō 1 “purify” or with Februus, the father of Dis, the god
of the Underworld. (Other than in discussions of this etymology, the
verb and the god are scarcely known.) Associations with purification
or the Underworld might well be appropriate to the final month of the
year.
The calendar continued to be
reckoned on 355 days. As pontifex maximus, leader of the priestly
college in charge of the calendar as part of the Roman religious year,
Julius Caesar added ten days per year, with an extra day at the end
of February every fourth year. The reform came into effect on January
1st 45, after a year with 445 days. This system loses touch with the
seasons much more slowly, and remained in force until the reforms of
Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The most frequent derivation of the term
pontifex in antiquity was from pons, pontis masc.
3 “bridge” and facere, but the pontificēs had no
particular link with bridge-building. An alternative derivation was
from posse and (sacra) facere, i.e. the
pontificēs had authority over religion observations. Like Julius
Caesar, Pope Gregory was the chief pontiff, the pontifex maximus
(a title not used of the popes till the 6th century). The Gregorian
reforms were only gradually adopted by the various European countries,
not being used in Greece till 1923. The Russian Orthodox Church and,
to some extent, the Greek Orthodox Church still adhere to the Julian
system.
Years were reckoned either
AUC (ab urbe conditā), i.e. from the putative founding of Rome
in 753 BC or, more usually, by reference to the consuls. For example,
the birth of the poet Ovid in 43 BC took place AUC 711 (note the inclusive
reckoning) or in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, consulibus
Aulō Hirtiō et Gaiō Vibiō Pansā. The First Triumvirate (Pompey,
Crassus, Caesar) had Caesar appointed consul for 59 BC to carry through
legislation advantageous to them. Day after day, the other consul, M.
Calpurnius Bibulus, declared the omens to be unfavorable for senatorial
business, but Caesar went ahead with the legislation anyway: the year
was facetiously known as the consulship of Julius and Caesar; in 45,
Caesar actually did hold the consulship without a colleague (as Pompey
had done in 52). The consular method has the drawback that it can be
applied only to the past: a Roman in 44 BC could not use it to refer
to 34 BC. I can in any case cite no example of a future reference using
the AUC-system. (The reckoning of the year in relation to the
birth of Jesus was first introduced in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus; in
devising this system, he was the first person in the Roman world known
to use the number zero.)
Reckoning years by the consuls
may seem difficult, but who was King of England in 1651, President of
the United States in 1851? (These are much easier questions, since they
require only one answer each and kings and presidents do not change
every year.)
The months, which, after Caesar’s
reforms, had the same number of days as now, each had three named days,
in relation to which all other days were reckoned: the Kalends (Kalendae,
-ārum fem. 1) on the 1st, the Nones (Nōnae, -ārum
fem. 1) on the 5th, except in March, May, July and October (on the 7th),
and the Ides (Idūs, -uum fem. 4) on the 13th, except
in March, May, July and October (on the 15th). The Kalendae
were associated with the rare verb calō 1 “call”, perhaps
the day on which the pontifex announced whether the Nones would be on
the fifth or the seventh (a presumably rather uncontroversial ritual);
the Nōnae are the ninth day (by inclusive reckoning) before
the Ides; the derivation of Īdūs is unknown, though there was
speculation linking it with an Etruscan word meaning “divide” (sc.
the month).
The day before any of these
named days was called precisely that, using the adverb prīdiē
“on the day before” as if it were a preposition taking the accusative:
e.g. prīdiē Īdūs Martiās March 14th, prīdiē
Kalendās Maiās April 30th. Note the feminine forms Martiās
and Maiās, agreeing with the feminine nouns Īdūs and
Kalendās.
The 2nd and 3rd,
the 6th-11th and the 14th till the antepenultimate day of each month,
except March, May, July and October (2nd-5th, 8th-13th, 16th-29th),
were reckoned, counting inclusively, from the next named day: e.g. the
3rd of December is the third day (counting the 3rd, 4th and 5th) before
the Nones, and this is expressed either by an ablative “of time when”
followed by ante + acc., tertiō
diē ante Nōnās Decembrēs (commonly abbreviated to tertiō
Nōnās Decembrēs), or, rather oddly, by ante with a double
accusative ante diem tertium Nōnās Decembrēs. Note the following
further examples: ante diem decimum Kalendās Octobrēs (September
22nd), quindecimō diē ante Kalendās Novembrēs (18th October)
ante diem quartum Īdūs Novembrēs (10th November), octāvō
diē ante Kalendās Iānuāriās (25th December). Abbreviations
are commonly used. The examples given above could be written as prīd.
Īd. Mart., prīd. Kal. Mai., a. d. iii Nōn. Dec.,
a. d. x Kal. Oct., a. d. xv Kal. Nov., a.d. iv
Īd. Nov., a. d. viii Kal. Iān.
The method of reckoning the
days of the month is even stranger, but not so strange as in Greece,
where each of the major city-states had its own idiosyncratic calendar.
For example, “The seeds of the fir tree are at their ripest when the
constellation Arcturus is rising, the season that the Romans call the
month of September, and we in Pergamum call Hyperberetaeus, and is known
in Athens as Mysteries” (Galen On the Preservation of Health
4.6).
Inclusive reckoning survives
in the Romance words for “fortnight”: Fr. quinzaine (quinze
jours), Ital. quindicina (quindici giorni), Sp.
quincena (quince días). (The rather attractive word “fortnight”
itself retains the old Germanic method of reckoning time by nights,
but has become almost obsolete in some branches of modern English, as
did “sennight” long ago.)
Every eighth day was a nundinae
(from novem + diēs “nine days” by inclusive reckoning),
on which markets were held. By the end of the Republic, the Romans were
aware of the eastern seven-day week which, with the adoption of Christianity
in the 4th century, came to be used officially throughout the empire.
The days of the week were named for the seven known “planets”. These
names survive in most Romance languages, as can be seen, for example,
in French, but the English names are mostly Germanic in origin, replacing
the Roman deities with their Teutonic equivalents:
lūnae diēs | lundi | Monday | (The moon) |
Martis diēs | mardi | Tuesday | (Tíw) |
Mercuriī diēs | mercredi | Wednesday | (Woden) |
Iovis diēs | jeudi | Thursday | (Thor) |
Veneris diēs | vendredi | Friday | (Frigg) |
Sāturnī diēs | samedi | Saturday | (Saturn) |
sōlis diēs | dimanche | Sunday | (The sun) |
“Wednesday” is Woden’s
day; Woden was the highest Teutonic deity, but he was identified esp.
with Mercury. “Samedi” is sabbatī
diēs (the day of the sabbath, Span. sábado, Ital. sabato).
“Dimanche” is dominicus diēs (the Lord’s day, Span.
domingo, Ital. domenica).