inscriptions on the walls.^19 These fastidid not, like earlier fasti,simply identify the
festivals or give a note for the legal status of particular days, marking whether it was
possible to conduct business on that day or hold assemblies. Fulvius’s display seems
to have set a precedent for subsequent monumental fastiin starting the practice of
annotating the fastiwith exegetical material; we are told, for example, that Fulvius’s
fastihad a learned discussion of the etymologies of the names of various months.^20
Fulvius may have controlled such material from his own resources, but a more likely
candidate as the learned source is the poet Ennius, who had traveled with Fulvius on
the Ambracia campaign and had celebrated his victory in a fabula praetexta.^21 Ennius
may also have assisted Fulvius in the construction of a set of consular fasti,for he
was engaged at the time on his Annales,for which he will have needed a data bank
of his own.^22 There is no direct evidence that Fulvius’s temple contained consular as
well as calendrical fasti,yet the likelihood is increased by the clear later popularity
of the paired format, and especially by the paired consular and calendrical format of
the only fastito survive from the Republic, the Fasti Antiates.^23 The best case for the
coexistence of both kinds offastiin Fulvius’s complex is that of Gildenhard, who
suggests a Fulvian “conception of time that combined the sacral (calendar) with the
historical (names and dates of magistrates),” together with “the representation of a
historical continuum, sketched out year by year through the names of former con-
suls and censors.”^24 As Gildenhard goes on to argue, such a conception of time and
of history’s movement to an end point through the actions of great individuals is
precisely what one finds in Ennius’s Annales,a fitting poetic counterpart to the com-
plex of Fulvius’s temple, with both the epic and the temple combining “a linear
chronology with a sacral conception of time and military success.”^25
THE CONSULS’ YEARS
The purpose and function of the consular fastiare not as easy to grasp as may
appear at first. Their symbolic and commemorative power is vast, as they embody
the Republican principles of collegiality and succession, record the names of a phe-
nomenally tenacious and successful set of families, and identify the elapsed time of
the Roman people with an eponymous office of immense prestige: “historical time
was represented for the Romans by the annual rhythm of consulships; they sym-
bolised, in the temporal dimension, the Republic.”^26 Such is the mentality under-
pinning Lucan’s despairing characterization of the lost Republic as “the times of
laws, years taking their name from the consul” (tempora legum/... annos a consule
nomen habentis,7.440 – 41). The utilitarian dimension of the fastiis less clear.^27 Cer-
- Years, Months, Days II: Grids of the Fasti