Conclusion: the Julian calendar in the Roman EmpireThe dissemination of the Julian calendar across the Roman Empire was
relatively rapid. How this occurred is not clearly understood. According to
Macrobius, Caesar put out an edict that was widely publicized, although its
intention was not necessarily to be binding on those who did not use the
Roman calendar.^189 The text of this edict is not extant, but Macrobius’account
is not implausible, as Julianized calendars are known to have been slightly later
instituted and disseminated through official edicts.^190 But even without an
edict, the Julian calendar will have spread through the agency of the Roman
army (Feeney 2007: 210), Roman colonies,^191 and thefledgling provincial
administration of the Roman Empire.
The adaptation of local Italian calendars to the Roman calendar may have
begun already in the late Republican period, before the Julian calendar was
instituted.^192 But after Caesar’s calendar reform, and certainly by the reign of
Augustus, the Julian calendar had been massively diffused in Italy, mainly
through the medium of publicly inscribedfasti.^193 The Julian calendar was
similarly adopted in theWestern provinces of the Roman Empire, even if the
practice of erectingfastiin public places seems not to have spread outside
Italy.^194 Dated evidence from the Augustan period is sparse, if at all existent,
but the only calendar attested in Gaul, Britain, Spain, and the north African
coast (up to and including Libya Tripolitana), from the beginning of the
Roman period until the end of Antiquity, is Julian. The calendars that must
have pre-existed in these regions—e.g. Celtic calendars, which appear to have
(^189) Macrobius,Saturnalia1. 14. 13 (edicto posito publicavit).
(^190) In particular, the Julianized calendar of the province of Asia, of which the widely
publicized decree of 8BCEhas survived in several copies: see Ch. 5.
(^191) As seems evident from the early-1st-c.CEfastiof thecoloniaof Tauromenium (Sicily), the
only publicly inscribed Roman calendar that is known from outside Italy (AE1988 no. 625–6;
Rüpke 1995: 133 192 – 8).
Rüpke (1995) 170–3. Similarities between the Roman and other pre-Julian Italian calen-
dars (e.g. with the use of kalends, nones, and ides) suggest, at least, a pool of shared calendrical
practices (Edlund-Berry 1992, on the Etruscan calendar). It is generally assumed that Italian
calendars were originally lunar (see Borgeaud 1982: 21–42, on the Umbrian and Oscan calen-
dars, and Emiliozzi 1983 and below Ch. 6, on the Etruscan calendar), but the evidence is scant.
(^193) Rüpke loc. cit. and Crawford (1996) 426. For the corpus of Italianfastifrom the early
imperial period, all using a Julian calendar scheme, see Degrassi (1963) and Rüpke (1995)
95 – 145, who notes, however (170–3), the concentration of thesefastiin and around the city of
Rome.
(^194) Except for thefastiof Tauromenium, in Sicily (above, n. 191). For an early attestation of
the Julian calendar in the province of Noricum, seeAE2006; 971, an inscription dated to the
bissextusfrom Magdalensburg, southern Austria,first half of 1st c.CE. For the Julian calendar in
Gaul, see e.g. Ch. 6 n. 36. For Numidia, the evidence is inCILviii. 1859, a list of Julian dates from
Theveste.
TheRise of the Fixed Calendars 225