Throughout this section I am deeply indebted to the important papers of Bodel
(1993 and 1995), and to his generous correspondence with me on this question.
Rüpke 1995a, 191.
This is to be seen in the middle of the illustration of the Fasti Antiates in fig. 9.
The year 130 b.c.e.is very fragmentary, but it is clear that the same convention is fol-
lowed there as well.
Bodel 1993, 262.
Bodel 1993, 264. The Fasti Tauromenitani similarly “purport to indicate the
day on which each suffect entered office, with the natural consequence that the suffecti
of the year, like the ordinariiof the various years, appear in chronological order” (265).
As Lucan points out with his mordant comment that the consular office lost its
power with Julius Caesar, but that “just so the time does not lack a name, monthly con-
suls mark the epochs onto the fasti” (tantum careat ne nomine tempus,/menstruus in fas-
tos distinguit saecula consul,5.398 – 99).
We are still left with the issue of locating the change in convention as indeed an
Augustan one, given that the Fasti Venusini have the same convention of dating
suffects as Tablet V of Augustus’s fastiyet originally went back to the Social War
(Degrassi 1947, no. 8; 249 – 56). The extant remains of Fasti Venusini cover only the
years 35 – 28 b.c.e., so that it is unfortunately impossible to know how they recorded
suffects in the early years of the list. It is certainly possible that they recorded suffects
in the “new” way for the early years, in which case they may well have had a pre-
Augustan source. These fasti,however, were inscribed some time after 16 b.c.e.
(Degrassi 1947, 250), and it is far more compelling to see them responding to an
Augustan transformation of the office and of the fasti;as Bodel points out, the Fasti
Venusini “may or may not have recorded suffects by date from their inception a bello
Marsico” (Bodel 1995, 281 n. 9). Augustus’s own fasti,after all, change their conven-
tion at a certain stage, and it is possible that the Fasti Venusini did as well. If the Fasti
Venusini did record suffects by date from the start, then it is still possible that they
retrojected the Augustan convention, approximating or inventing dates in the process.
I thank John Bodel for enlightening discussion of this vexed question.
Bodel 1993, 263: “The whole system changes.” Lacey (1979) well brings out
the way in which the use and significance oftribunicia potestasevolved as Augustus felt
his way forward in the unparalleled circumstances of his new institutions.
Since each year now has its suffects, introduced by the date “from the Kalends
of July” and moved over to the far right, the words Imp. Caesarat the beginning of each
year are strikingly “paragraphed” each time, with a blank space above them. The year
13 c.e.is the end of the document as we have it, for there is no room for additions at
this point: whether it was continued elsewhere is unknown (Degrassi 1947, 20).
Lacey 1979, 33. Bodel (1995, 292 – 93) makes a persuasive case for 2 b.c.e.as the
crucial year in which many of these threads were pulled together by Augustus, as he
notes to pages 177 – 181
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