How To Tell Dates

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

So today is Caesar's death and somehow our class got into a discussion of why the Romans preferred tellings

the dates by referring to whose consulships..., e.g. : Caesare et Bibulo consulibus (abl. absolute) ?

 

So the question is, why did the Romans rather use the consulships instead of direct years as a marker, eg: 69 B.C.?

 

Even more complicated is using the Kalends, Ides, and Nones. It's even more complicated in Latin. So why did the Romans prefer using this complex system for telling days of the months?

 

Because of this complicated Roman style, its no wonder the Roman dates are way off...thank goodness Caesar knew how to fix it.

[Primus Pilus]

Because of this complicated Roman style, its no wonder the Roman dates are way off...thank goodness Caesar knew how to fix it.

 

Also be sure to give credit to those Egyptian astrologists. Caesar may have commissioned/approved the work, but without them, the calendar still may have been a mess for some time.

 

The Romans used consulships as time markers because they were simple. Each term was a single year and the correlation was easy. They still also marked time according to the traditional calendar dating from the founding of Rome. AUC or 'ab urbe condita' marked years 'from the founding of the city' and was used in some formal circumstances, but the average person was probably more likely to recall years by the 'consulship of xyz'.

 

My own Calendar overview.

[Pantagathus]

The Romans used consulships as time markers because they were simple.

 

Just as the Greeks marked time by the Olympiads. It may not be easy for us to reconstruct but as P-P said, it was easy for those contemporary with the method.

[caldrail]

We use numbers to identify years. This year is 2006. We can do this because we know exactly which datum we need, in our case the birth of Jesus. Romans didn't. Not all romans were christian even in later times, not all had decent education, and it was easier to recall the year in which so-and so were consuls.

 

I remember the year when Maggie Thatcher was prime minister - get the idea?

[Gaius Octavius]

A Problem:

Assume that a 'loan', at interest, was made on October 1, to be repaid one year hence. The Pontifex Maximus forgets to insert January and February into the calendar. How was the interest calculated, i.e., for 10 months or for 12? Was the repayment date reset to December 1? Or, was the borrower just out of luck and paid 12 months interest along with a 10 month 'early' repayment?

 

Another Problem:

A group of plebians are chatting in a pub and agree to meet 27 days later. Since I don't think that they had 'calendars' handy the way moderns do, how did they know when the time to meet had arrived? Were calendars posted on every corner of the city?

 

Tomorrow is March 20, the vernal equinox, should I be wishing all a Happy New Year?

 

Valete,

Gaius

SPQR

Edited March 19, 2006 by Gaius Octavius

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Yeah, but how would a 4th century Roman recall a pre-Christ Roman.