thelunadate refers to a local, Etruscan lunar calendar, which was cited and
used alongside the Roman date.^79 But in late Antiquity, there is no obvious
lunar calendar to which these dates could have referred. The theory that
epigraphiclunadates referred to an official lunar calendar that was publicly
used, alongside the Julian calendar, in the Christian Roman Empire has long
been rejected as without foundation.^80 Christian lunar calendars (the Easter
cycles) were available in this period (more on this below), but they were only
designed for the computation of the date of Easter; they are not known to have
been used for general purposes of dating or time-reckoning. Indeed, frequent
discrepancies between epigraphiclunadates and the Easter cycles suggest that
even in late Antiquitylunadates in inscriptions were not derived from any
known Christian lunar calendar.^81 That thelunaformula does not imply or
refer to a lunar calendar is confirmed by the limited information that it
supplies: it gives the day number in a lunar month, but does not identify
this month, either by name or by number. At most,lunadates implied a
monthly—but not an annual—lunar calendar.
The absence of a standard lunar calendar for thelunadates to refer to,
however, does not mean thatlunadates could not have functioned usefully as
a method of dating. Mostlunadates in the inscriptions assume a lunar month
beginning at the conjunction (and not, as in many other lunar calendars, at
first visibility of the new crescent).^82 This apparently shared convention would
have given a commonly recognized meaning to alllunadates. As to the
absence of lunar month-names or numbers, thelunadate would have been
no worse than weekdays, which until this very day are used for dating
(^79) The termGignein the inscription appears to be a local Etruscan month-name: see above,
near n. 40. 80
This theory is Mommsen’s, cited in full and easily refuted by Eriksson (1956) 29–31.
(^81) This can be illustrated from the Christianlunainscriptions from Rome of the second half
of the 4th c., of which only four are securely dated (nos. 5, 6, 9, and probably also 4). If any Easter
cycle was used by late-4th-c. Christians in Rome for the computation of epigraphiclunadates, it
would have been thesupputatioRomana. Twolunadates in these inscriptions conform to the
supputatio(nos. 4 and 6) but the other two are retarded by one day (nos. 5 and 9). The
relationship between Christian Easter cycles and 82 lunadating will be further considered below.
By‘conjunction’I mean here the day (from midnight to midnight) within which, according
to our reckoning, the conjunction of sun and moon occurred. Someflexibility should be allowed,
given the difficulty for ordinary ancient people to calculate the moment of conjunction with any
precision. The Pompeii inscription from 60CE(above, near n. 41), then nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 15, and
16 are reasonably compatible a lunar month from the conjunction; only no. 1 implies a lunar
month from one day after (other inscriptions are uncertain because too fragmentary). See lunar
data in Holford-Strevens (2008) 206–7. The lunar date of no. 19 (.. .luna XVII,vixit ann(os)
XLVI.. .) is clearly erroneous, and should be eitherVIIII(so Diehl) orX(maybe preferable, as the
erroneousXVIIcan then be explained somehow as dittographic, due to the wordVIXITthat
follows—andXwould imply again a lunar month from the conjunction). The date of no. 20 is
uncertain, but possibly in line with the conjunction (see above, n. 52). This all conforms to
Pliny’s statement that the lunar month begins at the conjunction (coitus) of the sun and moon
(Nat.Hist.18. 323–5), although he may just have meant the period when the moon is invisible
(so Bowen and Goldstein 1994: 707 n. 36).
Dissidence and Subversion 323