gested that Augustus’s temporal complex in the Forum included now lost calendri-
cal fastito accompany the surviving consular and “triumphal” fasti,to make a
complete representation of civil time.^12 However these cases may be, there is no
doubt that our first surviving fasti,found at Anzio (Antium) and dating to around
55 b.c.e., are a doublet, with a consular list and a calendar displayed together on the
walls of a private house: the term Fasti Antiates refers to both. This pattern con-
tinues well into the Empire, all the way to the Codex-Calendar of 354 c.e.^13
The pairing of these two kinds offastiis one to which modern readers may
readily respond, through the common modern conception of time as either an
arrow or a cycle.^14 The onward linear progress of time ’s arrow is visible in the
Fasti Consulares, the list of the executive magistrates of the state, laid out in
sequence back to the beginning of the Republic; the recurring patterns of the city’s
life, time ’s cycle, are laid out in the Fasti Anni, with its grid of invariable days and
months. Ovid capitalizes on these two perspectives in his two overlapping master-
pieces on time, the Metamorphosesand the Fasti.In his proem to the Metamorphoses
he announces that the poem will go all the way from the origin of the world down
to mea tempora,“my times” (1.3 – 4); Barchiesi first noticed the crucial point that
temporais the first word of the Fasti,so that the arrow of Ovid ’s hexametric time
in the Metamorphosescarries on down until it hits the circle of his elegiac time in
the calendrical Fasti.^15 These two categories are not watertight in separation, since
time ’s arrow and time ’s cycle are never completely independent in the apprehen-
sion of time. The serried ranks of the consuls are themselves a part of a cyclical
pattern, with every year yielding another pair, so as to reinforce the feeling that the
official life of the city is an orderly cycle as well as a forward movement through
time; while the calendar of the Romans is an embodiment of history’s movement
in various ways, showing the successive temple dedications of the Roman people,
and eventually, as we shall see, under the Empire, incorporating the historical
deeds of the imperial family, their assumptions of power, and their deaths.^16 Again,
Ovid is perfectly alive to these issues, as he lays out the historical force of the
imperial fastiand reveals the onward progress of time ’s arrow even in his circular
Fasti:the death of Augustus in 14 c.e.moves the initial dedication from the first to
the second book, and the new dedication to book 1 focuses on Germanicus, who
now occupies the inherently anticipatory position of heir to the current emperor.^17
The pairing of calendrical and consular fastivery probably goes back to Fulvius
Nobilior’s temple of Hercules Musarum, dedicated sometime after his Ambracian
triumph of 187 b.c.e., perhaps, as suggested in the last chapter, in 184 b.c.e.^18 Cer-
tainly the temple contained calendrical fasti,most likely in the form of painted
Time’s Arrow and Time’s Cycle. 169