erance that Augustus will perform in historical — contemporary — time.^142 All this
is made possible by the calendar’s generation of a sense of identity of the “same”
day, which connects the present with the distant past. Thanks to the Roman Fasti
you can travel between time zones through a version of what the space-time physi-
cists call a wormhole.^143 Through the superimposed layers of the fasti,12 August
1177 b.c.e.can take you tumbling down to 12 August 29 b.c.e.^144 The repetitive
“sameness” of this numinous day through Roman history is marked by the unique
device of repeating the line-ending quae maxima semperfrom line 271 to 272 in the
description of the institution of the cult.^145 The calendrical resonances continue as
the book goes on. The “next” day, after Aeneas has passed the night in Evander’s
hut, is 13 August, the first of the three days of Octavian’s triple triumph; on this
day Aeneas will receive from his mother the shield of Vulcan, whose description
will culminate in Octavian’s triumph, likewise taking place on the “same” day.
Aeneas’s arrival puts the site of Rome into the heart of meaningful time, locat-
ing the city at the intersection point of a number of matrices, with the anniversary
doing most of the work of creating the significant links. Here we see Aeneas, the
last demigod, the survivor of the Trojan War, who brings world history in his per-
son to intersect with the site of Rome for the first time; the arrival of Jupiter’s
favored Trojans definitively marks the end of the local Golden Age.^146 The Roman
calendar, dotted with wormholes of anniversary that connect disparate epochs
through the identity of the day, is here brought into history for the first time
through its proleptic reach down into future time, linking the fates of Aeneas and
Augustus. Only at the site of Rome is the Roman calendar operative in this poem,
and on the shield at the end of the book there is a battery of events that will all have
triggered calendrical associations for the reader: 25 August, the Consualia, with the
rape of the Sabine women (635 – 36); 15 February, the Lupercalia, with 19 March
and 19 October, the processions of the Salii (663); the glorious Nones, 5 Decem-
ber, 63 b.c.e., with Cato giving judgment on Catiline (668 – 70); 2 September 31
b.c.e., the battle of Actium (671 – 708); 13, 14, and 15 August 29 b.c.e., the triple
triumph of Augustus (714 – 29).
It is pleasing that the anniversary power of the Roman calendar is first brought
into effect on the feast day of Hercules, when Aeneas meets Evander, because
Evander is an Arcadian, and traditionally the acorn-munching Arcadians were the
first of men, born before the moon — which is to say, for people who use lunar cal-
endars, born before time.^147 But on the site of Rome Evander’s Arcadians have a
calendar, even if it might have only one day on it, the day of Hercules, 12 August:
“it is Hercules’ deliverance of the Arcadians from the threat of Cacus that starts
- Years, Months, Days I: Eras and Anniversaries