- Years, Months, Days I: Eras and Anniversaries
Julian reform, and their solutions are highly revealing of their attitudes to the iden-
tity of days and dates.^93 Caesar’s reform took effect from 1 January 45 b.c.e.—
though “reform” is a misleading word for what he did, as we shall see in more
detail in the final chapter, for “Caesar did not reform the Roman calendar, but
abandoned it and instituted the solar calendar of 365¼ days which was stable and
agreed with the seasons.”^94 In order to understand the implications of the reform
for anniversaries across the divide, a brief introduction to the workings of the
Roman Republican calendar is necessary; those who have these facts already at
their fingertips may skip over the next two paragraphs.^95
Roman calculation of the date was very different from the calculation we use.
We start at the beginning of the month and count forward: January 1, 2, 3, and so
on.^96 The Romans did not do this forward counting. They had three fixed points in
each month, and they counted down, “backwards,” to whichever of these points
was coming up next. Each month is split in half by the Ides (Idus), a name that the
Romans thought came from an Etruscan word meaning “to divide.”^97 In the
Republican calendar, four months are long months of 31 days, in which case the
Ides split them in the middle on the fifteenth day; the rest are short months of 29
days, or 28 in the case of February, in which case the Ides split them in the middle
on the thirteenth day. Nine days before the Ides comes another marker day. The
Latin word for “ninth” is nonus,so the ninth day before the Ides is called the Nones
(Nonae).^98 The only catch here is that the Romans counted inclusively, counting
both pegs at the end of a sequence instead of only one as we do, so that nine days
before the Ides for them is eight days before the Ides for us. In a long month, by
Roman counting, the Nones will be on what we call the seventh day of the month,
nine inclusive days before the fifteenth day; in a short month, the Nones will be on
the fifth day, nine inclusive days before the thirteenth. The Ides, then, split the
month, and nine inclusive days before the Ides come the Nones. The third of the
three fixed points in the month is the first day, the Kalends (Kalendae).^99
The fixed markers of Kalends, Nones, and Ides serve as orientation as the month
progresses, but you count down to the next marker coming (always inclusively),
and not forward from the last one. The Ides of March, to take the most famous
Roman date as an example for orientation, is on the fifteenth day of the month,
splitting in half the long, 31-day, month of March. Once we are past the Nones (our
“seventh” day of March), we are counting down (always inclusively) toward the
Ides. Accordingly, our “thirteenth,” two days before the Ides, as we would see it,
is for the inclusively counting Romans threedays before and so is called “the third