The extent to which pontifical tampering with the calendar, e.g. through
failure to intercalate, would have been regarded in Roman society—even by
Cicero himself—as wrong or illegitimate is actually far from straightforward.
Failure to intercalate could be motivated sometimes by disinterested, public
considerations, for example religious or‘superstitious’(as Macrobius suggests
inSaturnalia1. 14. 1), or for example out of concern that generals and
governors in distant provinces might not be informed of the intercalation
with sufficient notice.^179 But even if purely personal interests were involved,
tampering with intercalation was not necessarily considered illegitimate. Sig-
nificantly, the same Cicero who criticized the pontiffs’neglect of the calendar
can be caught writing to his friend Atticus, in the summer of 51BCE, with a
request to exert his political influence so as to prevent the intercalation of the
forthcoming year. Cicero was then on his way to assume a one-year procon-
sulship in Cilicia, which he dreaded like exile, and he wanted to prevent this
year from being prolonged through an intercalation.^180 His attempt to prevent
the intercalation—which turned up to be successful^181 —was clearly nothing
but self-motivated, because in calendrical terms an intercalation in 50BCEwas
well overdue. But corruption of the calendar, in this context, seems not to have
worried Cicero in the slightest way.
Cicero’s attitude is best understood if control of the calendar is viewed as
one of the many political processes that constituted the Roman Republic.
Politicians were entitled to canvas for or against an intercalation just as they
were entitled, for example, to canvass for their own election to office. The
pursuit of personal interests, in this context, was normal and encouraged, and
not without good reason: for it was personal interest that motivated indivi-
duals to contribute to the public good. Furthermore, the delegation of control
to a hypothetical suppression of one and a half months, from the ides of Januarius to the kalends
of Martius, in the Roman calendar). But he also suggests that in the context of the Greek
calendar, intercalation or suppression are only justified for purposes of lunisolar synchroniza-
tion, whereas Verres had acted out of personalfinancial interest, to secure the election of a local
grandee to the high priesthood in Cephalaedum (see Ch. 1 n. 145). This argument would
presumably have been relevant also to the Roman calendar, although this is not the context of
the speech.
(^179) Michels (1967) 168–70; see next n.
(^180) Cicero,Ad Atticum5. 9. 2, 5. 13. 3. Later in his year, on 13 Feb. 50BCE, Cicero was still
concerned that an intercalation might be made (ibid. 5. 21. 3)—which indicates, incidentally,
how late in the year the decision to intercalate could be taken (although we must allow a few
weeks for the information to have reached him in Cilicia). A week later, on 20 February, Cicero
wrote that he was prepared to act on the assumption that there had been no intercalation (ibid. 6.
- 12), but as he still did not know what had been decided, he dated receipt of his correspondent’s
letter not from the Kalends of March (which would have been the wrong date if an intercalary
month had been inserted) but from the Terminalia on 23 Februarius (ibid. 6. 1. 1:‘five days
before the Terminalia’). See Brind’Amour (1983) 96–8, Samuel (1972) 164, Rüpke (1995) 292–3,
Van Haeperen (2002) 219–21, Hannah (2005) 110–11.
(^181) As Cicero was eventually informed, in a letter dated February 50 CE which may have
reached him somewhat later (Ad Familiares8. 6. 5).
220 Calendars in Antiquity