its Egyptian model by adding the four-yearly leap year; the solar accuracy
which this produced was the Julian calendar’s most significant novelty.
The importance of the Julian calendar needs no spelling out. Its rapid
spread and reception in the provinces of the Roman Empire, which laid its
grounds for becoming the dominant calendar of the modern world, will be
examined in Chapter 5. In this chapter, attention will be given to the Roman
calendar of the Republican period (which preceded the institution of the Julian
calendar); I shall then examine the origins of the Julian calendar, its early
years, and the motivation that may have led to its institution.
The calendar was an important institution in Roman society. Tangible
evidence of this is the practice, attested throughout the Roman imperial
period, of erecting engraved and/or paintedfasti(permanent annual calen-
dars, with sometimes detailed lists of festivals) on private and public buildings,
especially on walls of temples.^123 Thefastithat have survived are a useful
source of epigraphic evidence on the Roman calendar, although from the
Republican period only one exemplar, theFasti Antiates, has survived.^124
Literary sources on the Republican calendar and on how the Julian calendar
was instituted are mostly non-contemporary and late (first–fifth centuriesCE);
they tend to agree with one another, but this is more likely due to literary
borrowings than to independent historical accuracy. In spite of the wealth of
evidence that we have for the general history of late Republican Rome, some
aspects of the Republican and early Julian calendars are very poorly known.
The Republican calendar: structureThe calendar of Republican Rome, before the institution of the Julian calendar
in 46BCE, was unique in its kind and irreconcilable with any other known
calendar in this period. It was clearly not lunar (although once it might have
been), but its relationship with the solar year was also unstable and inconsis-
tent. It was not afixed calendar, because of its irregular intercalations; but its
months werefixed, though with disconcertingly heterogeneous lengths—
making it an unusual, idiosyncratic combination of rather different calendrical
features.
(^123) Degrassi (1963), Rüpke (1995), and for a general introduction, Salzman (1990) 6–8,
Feeney (2007) 167–70. Publicfastiengraved on marble stone are specific to the Augustan and
early imperial period (mid-1st c.BCE–mid-1st c.CE); paintedfasti, usually in private buildings, are
attested in the 3rd–4th cc. (Rüpke 1995: 84–90, 145–51).
(^124) This calendar, sometimes calledFasti Antiates Maiores, is from Antium (south of Rome)
and dates from 84– 55 BCE. See Degrassi (1963) 1–28 (no. 1); Rüpke (1995) 39–44; also Beard,
North, and Price (1998) ii. 61–4, Hannah (2005) 102–6, and Feeney (2007) 183–4.
TheRise of the Fixed Calendars 205