Under Romulus the Romans had a calendar, but it was Numa, the priest-king from 715 to 672 B. C.' who gave them the official calendar they used until the time of Julius Caesar. The regulation of the calendar, as we shall see, was under the control of the Pontifex Maximus and his associates in the Pontifical College. The calendar was originally and primarily a religious institution for the purpose of registering the times and seasons considered sacred by the pontiffs. This naturally affected the civil life of the nation, because on the holydays secular business was either taboo or limited.
Of Numa it is said : "He also appointed days when public business might not be carried on, and others when it might, since it would sometimes be desirable that nothing should be brought before the people." Likewise : "He also divided the year into twelve months, and the days into those for legal business and for vacation."
Of the power exercised by the pontiffs, we read:
"An important and, indeed, universal influence was exercised by the pontiffs, not only on religious, but also on civic life, by means of the regulation of the calendar, which was assigned to them as possessing technical knowledge of the subject, and by means of their superintendence over the observance of the holidays. Owing to the character of the Roman reckoning of the year, it was necessary from time to time to intercalate certain days, with a view to bringing the calendar into agreement with the actual seasons to which the festivals were originally attached; and special technical knowledge was needed, in order to be sure on what days festivals fell.
"This technical knowledge was kept secret by the pontiffs as being a means of power. It was for the current month that they gave information to the people as to the distribution of the days, the festivals falling within the month, and the lawful and unlawful days (fasti and nefasti; see dies) for civil and legal transactions. In B. c. 304 the calendar of the months was made public by Gnaeus Flavius ; but the pontiffs still retained the right of regulating the year, and thereby the power of furthering or hindering the aims of parties and individuals by arbitrary insertion of intercalary months. This they kept up until the final regulation of the year introduced by Caesar as high pontiff in B. C. 46." 2
Concerning the announcement of the monthly holiday, Varro said :
"The first days of the month are named calendae, because on these days the nones of this month calantur 'are announced' by the pontiffs on the Capitoline in Announcement Hall, whether they will be on the fifth or the seventh, in this way : 'Juno Covella, I announce thee on the fifth day,' or 'Juno Covella, I announce thee on the seventh day.' The nones are so called because they are always the nouns, 'ninth' day before the Ides,' or because the nones are called the novus (new) month from the new moon, just as the calends of January are called the new year from the new sun. On the same day the people who were in the fields used to flock into the city to the king. Traces of this status are seen in the ceremonies held on the nones, on the Citadel, because at that time the high priest announces to the people the first monthly holidays which are to take place in that month."'
It was in the year 304 B. C. that Gnaeus (or Cneius) Flavius, secretary of the Pontifex Maximus, was seized with a spirit that was somewhat revolutionary, and published the calendar technique to the people. "He made public the rules of proceeding in judicial causes, hitherto shut up in the closets of the pontiffs ; and hung up to public view, round the Forum, the calendar on white tablets, that all might know when business could be transacted in the courts." '
Cicero, the famous Roman jurist, remarked that "few knew whether or not an action could be brought at law at any specified time ; for the calendar was not in the hands of the common people. Those who were consulted were in great power ; from whom a day was requested just as if from the Chaldean astrologers. A certain scribe was found, Gnaeus Flavius, who 'put out the eyes of the crows' and set before the people the calendar by which they could know all the days, and in this way he plucked the plumage of the wisdom of their clever legal advisers." '
The calendar, however, still remained under the control of the pontiffs, for we are told that Julius Caesar "reformed the calendar, which the negligence of the pontiffs had long so disordered, through their privilege of adding months or days at pleasure, that the harvest festivals did not come in the summer nor those of the vintage in the autumn."
Cicero urged that "care must be taken in arranging for the insertiOn of the intercalary months, a custom which was wisely instituted by Numa, but has now become obsolete through the neglect of the pontiffs of later periods."
When Julius Caesar became supreme pontiff, he reformed the calendar in 45 B. C. Censorinus says this about what was done up to the year 46 B. c.: "The confusion was at last carried so far, that C. Caesar, the Pontifex Maximus, in his third consulate, with Lepidus for his colleague, inserted between November and December two intercalary months of 67 days, the month of February having already received an intercalation of 23 days, and thus made the whole year to consist of 445 days." "
Censorinus then proceeds to tell how Caesar instituted a year of 365 days, in 45 B. c., also the intercalation of an extra day in the month of February every fourth year. Caesar was slain the next year after his calendar reform was instituted. During the pontificate of Lepidus, the pontiffs, misinterpreting Caesar's instructions, made every third instead of every fourth year a leap year, so that in the space of thirty-six years they had intercalated three days too many, i. e., twelve instead of nine. In 8 B. C. Augustus Caesar, who had become Pontifex Maximus four years before, ordered that no intercalation should be made for the next twelve years, so as to correct the error." From then on the calendar was regulated in accordance with the Julian plan of intercalation.
The Roman people also measured their days from midnight to midnight, a custom which was fixed by the Roman priesthood. Says Pliny the Elder : "The actual period of a day has been differently kept by different people: the Babylonians count the period between two sunrises, the Athenians that between two sunsets, the Umbrians from midday to midday, the common people everywhere from dawn to dark, the Roman priests and the authorities who fixed the official day, and also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, the period from midnight to midnight." "
FOOTNOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 Livy, "History of Rome," bk. x, ch. 19; Florus, "Epitome of Roman History," bk. r, ch. 2. On Numa and the calendar, see Ovid, "Fasti," bk. 3, lines 96-166; Plutarch, "Lives" (Numa); Macrobius, "Saturnalia," bk. s, chs. 12, 13; Censorinus, "De Die Natali," ch. 20; Solinus, "Polyhistor," bk. r, chs. 35-47.
2 'Harper's "Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities," pp. 1299, 1300, art. "Pontifex." (American Book Co., New York, 1896.)
3 The Ides of a month came at the time of the full moon, about the middle of the month.
4 Varro, "On the Latin Language," bk. 6, chs. 27, 28. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 7938.)
5 Livy, "History of Rome," bk. 9, ch. 46. For further information about the incident of Cneius Flavius, see Pliny the Elder, "Natural History," bk. 33, ch. 6; Aulus Gellius, "Attic Nights," bk. 7, ch. 9; Cicero, "Epistles to Atticus," bk. 6, Letter I; "On Oratory," bk. I, ch. 41 ; Macrobius, "Saturnalia," bk. 1, ch. 15.
6 To "put out the crow's eyes" was a proverbial saying which meant to "catch the weasel asleep," i. e.. by surprise.
7 Cicero, "Pro Murena," ch. II, a literal translation based on the Latin text found in "Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis," published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, England. See also the Latin text and English translation published by the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1937.
8 Suetonius, "The Lives of the Twelve Caesars" (Julius Caesar). Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Romans "wandered in still deeper darkness of error when they gave over the power of intercalation to the priests, who lawlessly served the advantage of tax collectors or of parties in litigation by arbitrarily subtracting or adding days."—"History," bk. 26, ch. .7. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1937.)
9 Cicero, "Laws," bk. 2, ch. 12. (Putnam's, New York, 1928.) See Dio Cassius, "Roman History," bk. 40, ch. 62, where the intercalation in one instance was a matter of contention in Roman politics.
10 Censorinus, "De Die Natali," ch. zo. Details regarding Caesar's calendar reform may be found in Macrobius, "Saturnalia," bk. 1, chs. 12, 13; Plutarch, "Lives" (Julius Caesar) ; Dio Cassius, "Roman History," bk. 43, ch. a6; Ovid, "Fasti," bk. 3, lines 96-166; Pliny the Elder, "Natural History," bk. 18, ch. 57; Ammianus Marcellinus, "History," bk. 26, ch. 1; Solinus, "Polyhistor," bk. I, chs. 35-47.
11 Macrobius, "Saturnalia," bk. I, ch. 14; Ammianus Marcellinus, "History," bk. 26, ch. ; Suetonius, ''The Lives of the Twelve Caesars" (Octavius Augustus) ; Solinus, "Polyhistor," bk. 1, chs. 35-47.
12 "Pliny the Elder, "Natural History," bk. 2, ch. 79. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1938.) For more data on this point see Aulus Gellius, "Attic Nights," bk. 3; Macrobius, "Saturnalia," bk. 1, ch. 3.
