a later date, is quite different, “marking the suffectiof each year as a group by list-
ing them in a single column beneath the names of one of the ordinarii,” and for the
first time marking the day of the year on which they entered office.^61 This is a great
change in emphasis, one that goes hand in hand with the new imperial practice of
having supplementary consuls every year as a matter of course. The Republican
convention of representing the suffects adheres to the principle that the consulship
is an office, and what counts is to show who replaced whom in that office, rather
than when; the new Augustan convention does not indicate who replaced whom,
but rather gives explicitly the day on which the suffect began his term. The Repub-
lican convention depends on the principle of succession, but the Augustan con-
vention reduces the importance of the office as an office and makes the governing
principle that of the date.^62 The consuls are now there primarily to chart a chronol-
ogy: it is this change in convention that highlights more effectively than anything
else the limitations of seeing the original eponymous lists as dates.^63
The second innovation is far more striking, immediately obvious to anyone who
looks at the Augustan years of the fastion their wall in the Capitoline Museum or
in Degrassi’s edition. In the year 23 b.c.e.the name of Augustus, as consul for the
eleventh time, heads the list. Then we are told that he abdicated and that L. Sestius
became consul in his place; immediately thereafter, we read that Augustus, after
abdicating from the consulate, accepted tribunicia potestas.In the entry for the next
year, 22 b.c.e., after the consuls’ names comes Augustus’s name, followed by “with
tribunician power” (tribunicia potestate). At this point, unfortunately, there is a gap
of ten years, until the year 12 b.c.e., where we find the names of the two consuls
and three suffects followed by “Augustus with tribunician power for the eleventh
time,” now with a partner in this novel office, whose name comes under, not
beside, his own — M. Agrippa, “for the sixth time.” When the new, fifth, tablet
begins afresh in the year 1 c.e., the revolutionary implications of Augustus’s new
office have been fully worked out:^64 figure 10 shows Degrassi’s drawing of the first
section of the fifth tablet, covering the years 1 – 7 c.e., with his transcription in
figure 11. Now Augustus’s name leads offeach year, before the names of the con-
suls, with the new imperial dating era of the emperor’s tenure oftribunicia potestas
“for the twenty-third time.” From now on, to the end of the tablet in 13 c.e., the
last full year of Augustus’s life, each year opens with the full width of each column
being covered by Augustus’s name and titles, beginning with Imp. Caesarand end-
ing with the remorselessly increasing numerals of his tenure.^65 In the year 5 c.e.his
name is once again joined by that of a colleague in tribunicia potestas,his desig-
nated heir Tiberius; from then on the pair of them introduce each year, with
- Years, Months, Days II: Grids of the Fasti