composed in Rome in 354CE. This well-studied document comprises, in
section VI of the codex, an extensive calendar with a total offive columns,
of which the last three are common to most Roman calendars orfasti: the
nundinal cycle (an 8-day cycle marked with letters running from A to H), the
Julian calendar months and days (starting with the Kalends of January), and
finally a list of festivals, games, or other events associated with specific days.
The second column, more original, is a seven-day cycle (marked with letters
running from A to G), which confirms that by the fourth century the seven-
day week had become an integral part of the Roman calendar. Thefirst
column can be identified as a lunar calendar, as it lists a succession of 30-
and 29-day months, subdivided into ten three-day sections (with one two-day
section in 29-day months) marked with letters running from A to K.^64
Earlier scholars have interpreted the purpose of this lunar column as
astrological; but this interpretation is weak, and depends entirely on an
analogy with the seven-day week column, whose astrological interpretation
is intricate and equally tenuous. Thus H. Stern (1953) 55–7 argues that the
seven-day week in the second column begins on Saturday, because 1 January is
marked with the letter A and we know that in the year 354CE, which the
calendar refers to, 1 January was a Saturday; that a week beginning on
Saturday must be astrological, as is incompatible with biblical (Jewish or
Christian) traditions, but corresponds to the traditional reckoning of the
planetary week;^65 and that if the seven-day week column is thus astrological,
the same can apply by analogy to the lunar column alongside it. But the whole
premise of this argument isflawed, because it is actually unlikely that the
calendar refers to the year 354CE—even though this is the last year in section
VIII of the same codex.^66 In 354CE, indeed, 1 January fell on or around the
20th of a lunar month, whereas the lunar column in this calendar begins with
the letter A, suggesting the beginning of a lunar month. The calendar must
rather have been intended for 355CE, when on 1 January wefind the unusual
(^64) Section VI of the Codex: Degrassi (1963) 237–62 no. 42 (‘Fasti Furii Filocali’), Lehoux
(2007) 192–4. Other sections of the Codex, which are referred to presently, were published
separately in Mommsen (1892). For detailed studies see H. Stern (1953) and Salzman (1990). 65
Dio (37. 18–19) and subsequent writers (including the author of section IV of our calendar
codex of 354) treat the planetary week as beginning on the day of Kronos or Saturn
(i.e. Saturday); but this is already evident in the (1st-c.BCE?)parapegmaof Pausilypon (Degrassi
1963: 304 no. 52; Lehoux 2007: 12–13, 174), in several inscriptions from Pompeii (CILiv. 6779,
8863), as well as in theparapegmatafrom Dura-Europus, from Trajan’s baths in Rome, the
Latiumparapegma, the Trier mould (see references above, nn. 54–8), the Trierparapegma
(Lehoux 2007) 176, the Arlonparapegma (ibid. 177), and the Rottweilparapegma(ibid.
178 – 9). Only Vettius Valens—whose perspective is also astrological—presents the week as
beginning on the day of Helios (i.e. Sunday:Anthologiarum Libri9. 1. 10). See further Blackburn
and Holford-Strevens (1999) 566–8, and in this specific context, Salzman (1990) 30–2, Lehoux
(2007) 40 66 – 1.
Mommsen (1892) 50–61. See Salzman (1990) 36–9.
Dissidence and Subversion 319