can obscure important divisions and connections in the original.^2 The calendrical
and consular fastiare both called simply fastiin ancient sources, without qualifi-
cation, so that it can sometimes be difficult to know to which category a Latin text
is referring.^3 It was, unsurprisingly, Mommsen who first drew attention to the sig-
nificance of this shared nomenclature and gave an explanation for it: both docu-
ments are part of a shared calendrical system.^4 Any developed calendrical system
needs to fix both the day and the year, and at Rome the day was fixed by the Fasti
Anni and the year by the Fasti Consulares — or rather, since both those terms are
modern usages, not Roman, we should say that day and year were fixed by the
fasti.^5 This crucial point was systematically developed by Hanell (1946). Even if
one does not accept his whole origin story about the introduction of a new calen-
dar with a new principle of eponymity at the time of the establishment of the
Capitoline cult of Jupiter at the end of the sixth century b.c.e., his study remains a
compelling account of the symbiosis of the two kinds offastias part of a calendar,
revealing their interdependence as the means offixing a mark in Roman time.^6 The
principal of eponymity was so strong that the use of the consuls’ names to identify
the year continued up to the time of the emperor Justinian, who introduced dating
by regnal years in 537 c.e.^7 What modern scholars regularly call Fasti Trium-
phales, on the other hand, are not fastiat all. They are not part of the calendar; the
triumphs they record may fall on any day in the year and do not occur on an annual
basis; the individuals who celebrate them are not necessarily eponymous magis-
trates. Nor is the term fastimeaningful when applied to lists of other nonepony-
mous magistrates, as so often occurs in modern scholarship.^8 Properly speaking,
then, however useful the various modern terminologies may be, the Roman Fasti
are the annual calendar and the list of eponymous magistrates, and nothing else.
In the light of their joint calendrical force it is not surprising that both charts, of
eponymous magistrates and of the days and months of the year, share the same
name. Nor is it surprising that the two kinds offastiare so regularly found together,
in monumental contexts or in books, since charting the city’s time required this
dualistic pairing.^9 Especially after the reform of 153 b.c.e., when the consuls began
to take up office every year on 1 January, the god Janus provided a key link between
the two fasti,as the god of the first month and the recipient of the consuls’ first
sacrifices on the occasion of their first day in office.^10 It is always worth entertain-
ing the hypothesis that when we know one kind offastiexisted in a certain place,
the other may have been there as well. In Fulvius Nobilior’s temple of Hercules
Musarum, for example, we know that calendrical fastiwere exhibited, and scholars
have suggested that consular fastiwere also present;^11 conversely, it has been sug-
- Years, Months, Days II: Grids of the Fasti