the calendar for “nineteen days before the Kalends of February” as a dies uitiosus,
“a defective day,” unfit for public business, and the reason is given: Antoni natalis,
“the birthday of Antonius.” Except that, in a sense, it is not — because when he
was born that date did not exist. As Suerbaum well puts it, it is as if the Senate is
saying not simply, “It would have been better for Rome if Antonius had never been
born,” but somehow almost “Antonius never wasborn.”^112 The deprivation of the
birthday brutally reinforces Antonius’s nonexistence.
If Augustus and Antony are examples of people who kept their birthday on the
same day even if it meant a different — in Antony’s case, a “nonexistent” — date,
then Augustus’s wife Livia is an example of a person who kept her birthday on the
same date even if it meant a different, “non-existent,” day.^113 Livia’s Julian birth-
day under Augustus was “the third (inclusive) day before the Kalends of Febru-
ary,” ante diem tertium Kalendas Februarias;^114 since January in the Julian calendar
has 31 days, this translates into 30 January. Now Livia cannot conceivably have
been born thirty days into the month of January, since when she was born, in 58
b.c.e., under the Republican calendar, January was a short month of 29 days. In 58
b.c.e.Livia must have been born on “the third (inclusive) day before the Kalends
of February,” ante diem tertium Kalendas Februarias,on the twenty-eighth day of
January as it then was; when the Julian reform came she simply went on celebrat-
ing her birthday on “the third day before the Kalends” as before, except that now
the identical “date” denoted a different day. If she had done what Antonius and
Augustus did, then she would have celebrated her birthday on “the fifth day before
the Kalends of February” instead, keeping to the original “day,” twenty-eight days
into the month, sixteen days after the Ides, and redescribing it according to the new
calendar.
THE BIRTHDAY AS AN ANNIVERSARY
It has been claimed that the Romans recalibrated their birthdays wholesale after
the Julian reform to take systematic account of the 445 days of the year 46 b.c.e.,
rather as George Washington and his peers recalibrated theirs to take account of
the 11 days dropped from 1752.^115 In fact, the Romans did not do so.^116 One reason
they did not go to this trouble is no doubt that until the Julian calendar had a
chance to sink in and become part of their mental equipment they did not have any
fixed conception that there had to be an absolutely regular span of time from one
birthday to the next, or indeed from any date in the year until the corresponding
date in the next year.^117 George Washington knew in his bones that his birthday
- Years, Months, Days I: Eras and Anniversaries