‘Gigne’—perhaps a local Etruscan month-name, although it is not attested
elsewhere—and to the third day of the lunar month. There is a short lacuna
after the word Gigne (which is itself poorly legible): it may have contained the
day number in month Gigne. Alternatively, Etruscan Gigne may have been
assimilated to the Roman month of October and conterminous with it, thus
eliminating the need for a day number. Finally, it is possible that the month
Gigne (and the rest of the Etruscan calendar) was itself lunar, and that the
wordlunawas only added here for clarification or emphasis. In any event, the
mention of a lunar date with thelunaformula at the end of the inscription is
beyond dispute.^40
The next inscription is from Pompeii, and dated Sunday 6 February 60CE,
luna16.^41 Later inscriptions are from the third century and beyond; the
following are from Rome, in approximate chronological order:^42
- Saturday, 20 November 202CE,luna18 (AE1941: 77, 1946: 85, 1980: 60).
- Friday, 5 November 269,luna24 (Diehl 3391,ICURix. 24315).
- Friday, 15 February (317),luna17 (ICURvii. 17423).^43
- Thursday, 17 April (357),luna12 (ICURv. 13104).
- Saturday, 8 May 364,luna20 (Diehl 4377,ICURvi. 15587).
- Thursday, 24 May 378,luna12 (Diehl 4378).
- Sunday (23 August 386),^44 luna12 (AE 1905: 79, Diehl 4379,ICUR
ii. 6042). - Friday, 17 September (392),luna15 (Diehl 4381,ICURii. 6502).
9.Wednesday, 25 February 397,luna12 (Diehl 2777,ICURvii. 17511). - Thursday, 10 May (423),luna15 (Diehl 4383,ICURvii. 19984).
- Thursday (26 December 463), luna 1 (AE 1917 – 18: 95, Diehl 4384,
ICURx. 27666). - (25 April 502),luna1 (Diehl 4874,ICURv. 13959,CIJi, no. 81*, Noy
i. 401).
(^40) CILi/2. 2511,AE1922: 91;AE1963: 35;AE1983: 394. For full discussion see Emiliozzi
(1983), whose reading I have used here.
(^41) CILiv. 4182,AE1897: 24; the nundinal day (Cumae) is also given. The reading of the lunar
date is problematic (see Holford-Strevens 2008: 206). According to our reckoning of the week, 6
February 60CEshould have been aWednesday; this raises the possibility that in Italy. in this early
period, the seven-day week was counted differently from ours (see Brind’Amour 1983: 268–70,
Stern 2010a: 111 n. 39). From the 2nd or 3rd cc.CE, however, there is reasonable evidence that the
seven-day week count had become standard and was the same as ours today, even though errors
were not uncommon in documents and inscriptions (seeWorp 1991; Stern 2001: 107 n. 31,
Meimaris and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou 2005: 48–51; 2008: 44; Stern 2010a: 110–11); howev-
er, the seven-day count in Antiquity is still in need of a systematic investigation.
(^42) References toICUR(Inscriptiones Christianae UrbisRomae) are to the new series. Brackets
are textual reconstructions (by earlier scholars, except for no. 20, which is my own). I have
omitted Diehl no. 4380 (ICURvi. 17249), because the reading(luna VII)Iis only a textual
conjecture.
(^43) This supersedes the reading in Diehl no. 4382, still cited in Holford-Strevens (2008) 207.
(^44) There are many other possible dates, all in Honorius’reign: see n. 74 below.
314 Calendars in Antiquity