But the rectification of the calendar by Julius, and the changes then introduced, brought about a multiplication of copies of the original one issued under the dictator’s edict[29]. Not only in Rome, but in the municipalities round about her, where the ancient religious usage of each city had since the enfranchisement of Italy been superseded, officially at least, by that of Rome, both public and private copies were made and set up either on stone, or painted on the walls or ceiling of a building.
Of such calendars we have in all fragments of some thirty, and one which is all but complete. Fourteen of these fragments were found in or near Rome, eleven in municipalities such as Praeneste, Caere, Amiternum, and others as far away as Allifae and Venusia; four are of uncertain origin[30]; and one is a curious fragment from Cisalpine Gaul[31]. Most of them are still extant on stone, but for a few we have to depend on written copies of an original now lost[32]. No day in the Roman year is without its annotation in one or more of these; the year is almost complete, as I have said, in the Fasti Maffeiani; and several others contain three or four months nearly perfect[33]. Two, though in a fragmentary condition, are of special interest. One of these, that of the ancient brotherhood of the Fratres Arvales, discovered in 1867 and following years in the grove of the brethren near Rome, contains some valuable additional notes in the fragments which survive of the months from August to November. The other, that of Praeneste, containing January, March, April and parts of February and December, is still more valuable from the comments it contains, most of which we can believe with confidence to have come from the hand of the great Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus. We are told by Suetonius that Verrius put up a calendar in the forum at Praeneste[34], drawn up by his own hand; and the date[35] and matter of these fragments found at Praeneste agree with what we know of the life and writings of Verrius. It is unlucky that recent attempts to find additional fragments should have been entirely without result; for the whole annotated calendar, if we possessed it, would probably throw light on many dark corners of our subject.
To these fragments of Julian calendars, all drawn up between B.C. 31 and A.D. 46, there remain to be added two in MSS.: (i) that of Philocalus, A.D. 354, (ii) that of Polemius Silvius, A.D. 448; neither of which are of much value for our present purpose, though they will be occasionally referred to. Lastly, we have two farmer’s almanacs on cubes of bronze, which omit the individual days, but are of use as showing the course of agricultural operations under the later Empire[36].
All these calendars, some of which had been printed wholly or in part long ago, while a few have only been discovered of late, have been brought together for the first time in the first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, edited by Mommsen with all his incomparable skill and learning, and furnished with ample elucidations and commentaries. And we now have the benefit of a second edition of this by the same editor, to whose labours in this as in every other department of Roman history it is almost impossible to express our debt in adequate words. All references to the calendars in the following pages will be made to this second edition.
A word remains to be said about the Fasti of Ovid[37], which is a poetical and often fanciful commentary on the calendar of the first half of the Julian year, i.e. January to June inclusive; each month being contained in one book. Ovid tells us himself[38] that he completed the year in twelve books; but the last six were probably never published, for they are never quoted by later writers. The first six were written but not published before the poet’s exile, and taken in hand again after the death of Augustus, but only the first book had been revised when the work was cut short by Ovid’s death.
Ovid’s work merits all praise as a literary performance, for the neatness and felicity of its versification and diction; but as a source of knowledge it is too much of a medley to be used without careful criticism. There is, however, a great deal in it that helps us to understand the views about the gods and their worship, not only of the scholars who pleased themselves and Augustus by investigating these subjects, but also of the common people both in Rome and in the country. But the value varies greatly throughout the work. Where the poet describes some bit of ritual which he has himself seen, or tells some Italian story he has himself heard, he is invaluable; but as a substitute for the work of Varro on which he drew, he only increases our thirst for the original. No great scholar himself, he aimed at producing a popular account of the results of the work of scholars, picking and choosing here and there as suited his purpose, and not troubling himself to write with scientific accuracy. Moreover, he probably made free use of Alexandrine poets, and especially of Callimachus, whose Aetia is in some degree his model for the whole poem; and thus it is that the work contains a large proportion of Greek myth, which is often hard to distinguish from the fragments of genuine Italian legend which are here and there imbedded in it. Still, when all is said, a student of the Roman religion should be grateful to Ovid; and when after the month of June we lose him as a companion, we may well feel that the subject not only loses with him what little literary interest it can boast of, but becomes for the most part a mere investigation of fossil rites, from which all life and meaning have departed for ever.
VI. The Calendar of the Republic and its Religious Festivals.
All the calendars still surviving belong, as we saw, to the early Empire, and represent the Fasti as revised by Julius. But what we have to do with is the calendar of the Republic. Can it be recovered from those we still possess? Fortunately this is quite an easy task, as Mommsen himself has pointed out[39]; we can reconstruct for certain the so-called calendar of Numa as it existed throughout the Republican era. The following considerations must be borne in mind:
1. It is certain that Caesar and his advisers would alter the familiar calendar as little as possible, acting in the spirit of persistent conservatism from which no true Roman was ever free. They added 10 days to the old normal year of 355 days, i.e. two at the end of January, August, and December, and one at the end of April, June, September, and November; but they retained the names of the months, and their division by Kalends, Nones, and Ides, and also the signs of the days, and the names of all festivals throughout the year. Later on further additions were made, chiefly in the way of glorification of the Emperors and their families; but the skeleton remained as it had been under the Republic.
2. It is almost certain that the Republican calendar itself had never been changed from its first publication down to the time of Caesar. There is no historical record of any alteration, either by the introduction of new festivals or in any other way. The origin of no festival is recorded in the history of the Republic, except the second Carmentalia, the Saturnalia, and the Cerealia[40]; and in these three cases we can be morally certain that the record, if such it can be called, is erroneous.
3. If Julius and his successors altered only by slight additions, and if the calendar which they had to work on was of great antiquity and unchanged during the Republic, how, in the next place, are we to distinguish the skeleton of that ancient calendar from the Julian and post-Julian additions? Nothing is easier; in Mommsen’s words, it is not a matter of calculation; a glance at the Fasti is sufficient. In all these it will be seen that the numbers, names, and signs of the days were cut or painted in large capital letters; while ludi, sacrifices, and all additional notes and comments appear in small capital letters. It cannot be demonstrated that the large capital letters represent the Republican calendar; but the circumstantial evidence, so to speak, is convincing. For inscribed in these large capitals is all the information which the Roman of the Republic would need; the dies fasti, comitiales, nefasti, &c.; the number of the days in the month; the position of the Nones and the Ides and the names of those days on which fixed festivals took place; all this in an abbreviated but no doubt familiar form. The minor sacrificial rites, which concerned the priests and magistrates rather than the people, he did not find there; they would only have confused him. The moveable festivals, too, he did not find there, as they