Caesar\'s Calendar. Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Sather Classical Lectures)

Horsfall 1997, 193 – 94, for this context, and others, as possible explanations for the
interest of a later poet in the figure of Nero.

Chapter 5. YEARS, MONTHS, AND DAYS I:
ERAS AND ANNIVERSARIES

1. Speakers of German, Italian, and French presumably find it less possible to
   evade the origins of the era, since they do not pronounce an abbreviation in the way
   English does with “b.c.,” but incorporate the name of the Messiah in normal speech
   when referring to dates “vor/nach Christus/Christi Geburt,” “avanti/dopo Cristo,”
   “avant/après Jésus-Christ” (though French will also refer to dates “avant notre ère”).


2. Ginzel 1906, 2:358; Leschhorn 1993, 11.


3. In general, on ancient eras, see RE1.606 – 52, Suppl. 3.24 – 30 (Kubitschek);
   Samuel 1972, 245 – 48; Bickerman 1980, 70 – 78; Leschhorn 1993; Hannah 2005, 92 – 94,
   146 – 57.
   4.RE1.632 – 34 (Kubitschek); Samuel 1972, 245 – 46; Bickerman 1980, 71 – 72;
   Leschhorn 1993, 22 – 43; Hannah 2005, 92 – 94.


4. Daffinà 1987, 19 – 20; cf. Sherwin-White 1987, 27: “Royal time now had continu-
   ity and was Seleucid,not an individual king’s.”


5. Ma 1999, 148: “The imposition of a Seleukid conceptual geography and a
   Seleukid time are acts of symbolical violence.”


6. Ginzel 1906, 1:263.


7. Stressed by Samuel 1972, 247 n. 1.
   9.Att.5.13.1 = Shackleton Bailey 1965 – 70, 106.1; cf. Mil.98. On this era of Bovil-
   lae, see Weinstock 1971, 189. Chris Kraus points out to me that Caesar opens book 7 of
   the De Bello Gallicowith a reference to the murder of Clodius, as if marking an era in
   the same way.


8. Kallet-Marx 1995, 14, against the conventional view that the era marks the
   annexation of the province of Macedonia.


9. Samuel 1972, 247; Leschhorn 1993, 221 – 25 (era of Pharsalus), 225 – 28
   (Actium).


10. Samuel 1972, 246 – 47: cf. Kallet-Marx 1995, 48, on the Achaean era of 145/4
    marking not the annexation of the province but “the ‘freedom’ granted by the Romans
    in the Mummian settlement.”


11. Leschhorn 1993, 419, 434.


12. Knapp 1986, 120.


13. Knapp 1986, esp. 132 – 35; the period of the inscriptions would be from 391 to
    557 c.e., on Knapp’s hypothesis.


14. Bickerman 1980, 77 – 78; Blackburn and Holford-Strevens 1999, 676. Compare
    the case of the era of the Incarnation, which took so long to take hold in historiogra-

notes to pages 139 – 140. 273