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Calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic

the Catholic liturgical calendar

The Roman calendar was the calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic. Although the term is primarily used for Rome's pre Julian calendars, it is often used inclusively of the Julian calendar established by the reforms of the Dictator Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus in the late 1st century BC. According to most Roman accounts, their original calendar was established by their legendary first king Romulus. It consisted of ten months, beginning in spring with March and leaving winter as an unassigned span of days before the next year. These months each had 30 or 31 days and ran for 38 nundinal cycles, each forming a kind of eight day weeknine days counted inclusively in the Roman mannerand ending with religious rituals and a public market. This fixed calendar bore traces of its origin as an observational lunar one. In particular, the most important days of each monthits kalends, nones, and idesseem to have derived from the new moon, the first quarter moon, and the full moon respectively. To a late date, the College of Pontiffs formally proclaimed each of these days on the Capitoline Hill and Roman dating counted down inclusively towards the next such day in any month. (For example, the year end festival of Terminalia on 23February was called , the 6th day before the March kalends.) Romulus's successor Numa Pompilius was then usually credited with a revised calendar that divided winter between the two months of January and February, shortened most other months accordingly, and brought everything into rough alignment with the solar year by some system of intercalation. This is a typical element of lunisolar calendars and was necessary to keep the Roman religious festivals and other activities in their proper seasons. Modern historians dispute various points of this account. It is possible the original calendar was agriculturally based, observational of the seasons and stars rather the moon, with ten months of varying length filling the entire year. If this ever existed, it would have changed to the lunisolar system later credited to Numa during the kingdom or early Republic under the influence of the Etruscans and of Pythagorean Southern Italian Greeks. After the establishment of the Republic, years began to be dated by consulships but the calendar and its rituals were otherwise very conservatively maintained until the Late Republic. Even when the nundinal cycles had completely departed from correlation with the moon's phases, a pontiff was obliged to meet the sacred king, to claim that he had observed the new moon, and to offer a sacrifice to Juno to solemnize each kalends. It is clear that, for a variety of reasons, the intercalation necessary for the system's accuracy was not always observed. Astronomical events recorded in Livy show the civil calendar had varied from the solar year by an entire season in 190 BC and was still two months off in 168 BC. By the 191 BC [[Lex Acilia de Intercalando or before, control of intercalation was given to the pontifex maximus butas these were often active political leaders like Caesarpolitical considerations continued to interfere with its regular application. Notably, intercalation had to be personally announced by the chief pontiff in Rome so, when his war in Gaul and civil war against Pompey kept Caesar out of the city for years at a time, the calendar was repeatedly left unadjusted. Victorious in civil war, Caesar reformed the calendar in 46 BC, coincidentally making the year of his third consulship last for 446days. This new Julian calendar was an entirely solar one, influenced by Egypt's. In order to avoid interfering with Rome's religious ceremonies, the reform distributed the unassigned days among the months (towards their ends) and did not adjust any nones or ides, even in months which came to have 31days. The Julian calendar was designed to have a single leap day every fourth year by repeating February 24 (a doubled VI. Kal. Mart. or ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias) but, following Caesar's assassination, the priests mistakenly added the bissextile (bis sextum) leap day every three years due to their inclusive counting. In order to bring the calendar back to its proper place, Augustus was obliged to suspend intercalation for one or two decades. At 365.25 days, the Julian calendar remained slightly longer than the solar year (365.24 days). By the 16th century, the date of Easter had shifted so far away from the vernal equinox that Pope Gregory XIII ordered a further correction to the calendar method, resulting in the establishment of the modern Gregorian calendar.

The original Roman calendar is usually believed to have been an observational lunar calendar whose months ended and began from the new moon. Because a lunar cycle is about 29 1/2 days long, such months would have varied between 29 and 30 days. Roman works on agriculture including those of Cato, Varro, Vergil, Columella, and Pliny invariably date their practices based on suitable conditions or upon the rising of stars, with only occasional supplementary mention of the civil calendar of their times until the 4th or 5th century author Palladius. Augury, formal Roman ornithomancy, continued to be the focus of a prestigious dedicated priesthood until at least the end of the 4th century. Although most Roman festivals in the historical record were closely tied to the nundinal cycle of the later calendar, there remained several moveable feasts (feriae conceptivae, "proclaimed festivals") like the Sementivae that were dependent on local conditions. Michels suggests this was the original state of all ancient festivals, marking divisions between the seasons and occasions within them.

Gnaeus Flavius, a secretary (scriba) to censor App. Claudius Caecus, introduced a series of reforms in 304 BC. Their exact nature is uncertain, although he is thought to have begun the custom of publishing the calendar in advance of the month, depriving the priests of some of their power but allowing for a more consistent calendar for official business.

Julius Caesar, following his victory in his civil war and in his role as pontifex maximus, ordered a reformation of the calendar in 46 BC. This was undertaken by a group of scholars apparently including the Alexandrian Sosigenes and the Roman M. Flavius. Its main lines involved the insertion of ten additional days throughout the calendar and regular intercalation of a single leap day every fourth year to bring the Roman calendar into close agreement with the solar year. The year 46 BC was the last of the old system and included three intercalary months, the first inserted in February and two more—Intercalaris Prior and Posterior—before the kalends of December.

As mentioned above, Rome's legendary 10 month calendar notionally lasted for 304days but was usually thought to make up the rest of the solar year during an unorganized winter period. The unattested but almost certain lunar year and the pre Julian civil year were 354 or 355 days long, with the difference from the solar year more or less corrected by an irregular intercalary month. The Julian year was 365days long, with a leap day doubled in length every fourth year, almost equivalent to the present Gregorian system. The calendar era before and under the Roman kings is uncertain but dating by regnal years was common in antiquity. Under the Roman Republic, from 509 BC, years were most commonly described in terms of their reigning ordinary consuls. or followed Diocletian's 15 year Indiction tax cycle. These cycles were not distinguished, however, so that "year 2 of the indiction" may refer to any of 298, 313, 328, &c. The Orthodox subjects of the Byzantine Empire used various Christian eras, including those based on Diocletian's persecutions, Christ's incarnation, and the supposed age of the world. The Romans did not have records of their early calendars but, like modern historians, assumed the year originally began in March on the basis of the names of the months following June. The consul M. Fulvius Nobilior (r. 189 BC) wrote a commentary on the calendar at his Temple of Hercules Musarum that claimed January had been named for Janus because the god faced both ways, suggesting it had been instituted as a first month. It was, however, usually said to have been instituted along with February, whose nature and festivals suggest it had originally been considered the last month of the year. The consuls' term of office—and thus the order of the years under the republic—seems to have changed several times. Their inaugurations were finally moved to January 1(Kal. Ian.) in 153BC to allow Q. Fulvius Nobilior to attack Segeda in Spain during the Celtiberian Wars, before which they had occurred on March 15 ([[Ides of March). There is reason to believe the inauguration date had been May 1during the 3rd century BC until 222BC and Livy mentions earlier inaugurations on May 15 (Eid. Mai. ), July 1 (Kal. Qui. ), August 1 (Kal. Sex. ), October 1(Kal. Oct.), and December 15 (Eid. Dec.). Under the Julian calendar, the year began on January 1 but years of the Indiction cycle began on September 1. In addition to Egypt's separate calendar, some provinces maintained their records using a local era. Africa dated its records sequentially from 39BC; Spain from AD38. This dating system continued as the Spanish era used in medieval Spain.

The continuity of names from the Roman to the Gregorian calendar can lead to the mistaken belief that Roman dates correspond to Julian or Gregorian ones. In fact, the essentially complete list of Roman consuls allows general certainty of years back to the establishment of the republic but the uncertainty as to the end of lunar dating and the irregularity of Roman intercalation means that dates which can be independently verified are invariably weeks to months outside of their "proper" place. Two astronomical events dated by Livy show the calendar four months out of alignment with the Julian date in 190BC and two months out of alignment in 168BC. Thus, "the year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Publius Licinius Crassus" (usually given as "205BC") actually began on March 15, 205BC, and ended on March 14, 204 BC, according to the Roman calendar but may have begun as early as November or December 206BC owing to its misalignment. Even following the establishment of the Julian calendar, the leap years were not applied correctly by the Roman priests, meaning dates are a few days out of their "proper" place until a few decades into Augustus's reign. Given the paucity of records regarding the state of the calendar and its intercalation, historians have reconstructed the correspondence of Roman dates to their Julian and Gregorian equivalents from disparate sources. There are detailed accounts of the decades leading up to the Julian reform, particularly the speeches and letters of Cicero, which permit an established chronology back to about 58BC. The nundinal cycle and a few known synchronisms—e. g., a Roman date in terms of the Attic calendar and Olympiad—are used to generate contested chronologies back to the start of the First Punic War in 264BC. Beyond that, dates are roughly known based on clues such as the dates of harvests and seasonal religious festivals.