It is fair to comment that Caesar was, above all, a political creature.
Although he employed scientific expertise for the creation of his calendar, it
was not scientific accuracy, but political attainments, that drove him. Sueto-
nius and most other ancient sources rightly emphasize, in the context of
Caesar’s calendar reform, that his intention was to curb the pontiffs and
‘tidy up the Roman State’. For the institution of the Julian calendar was,
primarily, a political process. It was about reducing the powers of the Senate
and priesthoods, and consolidating Caesar’s autocratic position; it was part of
the wider political changes that were transforming the Roman State under
Julius Caesar’s rule. It is no wonder that the new calendar may have become, in
due course, a symbol of Caesar’s power in the new political order.^187
Calendars and political systems: towards a structuralist approachThe institution of the Julian calendar was thus the outcome of very specific
conditions, mainly political, that were unique to the Roman State at the end of
the Republican period. It is the peculiarity of these conditions that explains
why a similar rationalization of the calendar did not occur, for example, in
contemporary (or earlier) Greece—even though Greek calendars suffered, it
may be argued, from similar defects as the Republican calendar.Without these
peculiar conditions, reform of the calendar would not have occurred in Rome
either.
The comparison of Republican Rome with the city states of Greece is
instructive precisely because of the similarity of their political traditions. The
complexity, irregularity, and unpredictability of the calendars in both Repub-
lican Rome and Greek city states embodied and reflected, in a certain way, the
political fragmentation and divisions between the states, the complex struc-
tures of their internal political systems (whether defined as democratic, oli-
garchic, or mixed), and the inherent unpredictability of political life within
such structures. By contrast, the simplicity, regularity, and predictability of
Caesar’s calendar—just as of the civil calendar of ancient Egypt, the Persian
notion that Caesar was aiming at restricting the power of the college. The pontiffs would have
had a political interest in backing the dictator; whilst from Caesar’s perspective their involvement
would have enhanced the legitimacy of his calendar reform.
(^187) Thefirst use of the Julian calendar as a symbol of Caesar’s autocratic power was perhaps,
as has been recently argued, the impressivehorologiummonument erected by Augustus on
Campus Martius in around 8BCE: Hannah (2005) 129–30, Feeney (2007) 196–7 and n. 131, and
Heslin (2007), who argues that it was not strictly speaking ahorologium, being neither a sundial
nor a calendar; its function was only astronomical, to indicate the annual course of the sun.
However, its intended effect would have been to demonstrate, in a monumental way, the
exactitude of the Julian calendar in relation to the solar year, and the authority of Augustus
who, aspontifex maximusand corrector of the Julian calendar, had erected it.
222 Calendars in Antiquity