On the various Christian millenary calculations, see Blackburn and Holford-
Strevens 1999, 787 – 88. Prophecies of Rome ’s doom, constructed around significant
numbers, abound in the Sibylline literature (Potter 1990, 236 – 40), and are reported by
historians as well: Dio, for example, reports a prophecy with 900 years as Rome ’s fated
span (57.18.3 – 5).
Nilsson 1920, 1717 – 18.
Syme 1958, 772 – 73: even if this particular case is very strained, his discussion
of the anniversary mentality is indispensable (771 – 74).
Grant (1950, 3 – 4) collects many examples of temple and colony foundations
timed to the century and its multiples or subdivisions.
“It cannot have escaped notice that his death took place a hundred years after
the fall of Carthage”: Nisbet and Hubbard 1978, 25.
For the possibilities, see the index of Grant 1950 under “anniversary years.” For
speeches in honor of later emperors’ five- and ten-year anniversaries of accession to
power, see Nixon and Rodgers 1994, 82 n. 5; compare the special care Augustus put into
festivities in the year 13 b.c.e., “the thirtieth anniversary of his dies imperii(7 January
43 b.c.... ), of his first acclamatioas imperator(16 April 43 b.c.), and of his first con-
sulship (19 August 43 b.c.)”: DuQuesnay 1995, 141.
The meaning of “100 years” must, however, have been a possible one from
the start: see Watkins 1995, 351, for the “ideal human lifespan of 100 years” as “Indo-
European patrimony.”
So, emphatically, Weinstock 1971, 191, whose whole account of the concept is
most valuable (191 – 97); see further Nilsson 1920; Neue Pauly10.1207 – 8.
For Varro’s use of this distinction, see, for example, Ling.6.12 on the natural
division of time and the civil names of days, with the closing comments of Hinds
(2005b). On Varro’s Antiquitatesas Censorinus’s prime source, see Grafton and Swerd-
low 1985.
There are clear links with two Greek schemes, Hesiod ’s succession of genera-
tions and the transmission of empire: Weinstock 1971, 192; Valvo 1988, 64 – 73. What
the Etruscan connection may be to these structures, and/or to the oriental patterns that
ultimately lie behind them, remains irrecoverable.
See Horsfall 1974, 114 – 15, for fascinating speculation on the possible impact of
this event on Virgil’s numerology in Aen.1.257 – 72, where Jupiter prophesies 333 years
from the last year of Aeneas’s wandering to the foundation of Rome. As Horsfall
points out, the portentous year 88 b.c.e.is 666 A.U.C., with a foundation date of
754/3, and it is possible that Virgil has halved this significant number into the signifi-
cant 333 and added them together in order to go back to the time of Aeneas.
Text in Lachmann 1848, 350 – 51; full discussion of the many textual problems in
Valvo 1988, 1 – 18.
notes to pages 145 – 146
wallpaper
(WallPaper)
#1