- The translation of Harris 1971, 34 n. 2, for the difficult phrase ob auaritiam prope
nouissimi octaui saeculi. - Adams 2003, 182.
- Serv. Auct. Ecl.9.46.
- So Weinstock 1971, 195, correcting the version given in Serv. Auct. on Virg.
Ecl.9.46, that the man said he would die because he had revealed divine secrets. It is
very telling that, as Serv. Auct. informs us, Augustus related this incident in book 2 of
his autobiography, associating his own advent in Rome with the dawn of the new
saeculum. - Harris 1971, 36 – 37.
- Hubaux 1945, 5 – 6; Grafton and Swerdlow 1985, 461. Vettius’s calculation puts
the terminus of Roman power in the middle of the fifth century c.e., which makes him
a better prognosticator than most of his ilk (at least as far as the Western Empire is con-
cerned). - Nilsson 1920; Pighi 1965; Beard, North, and Price 1998, 71 – 72, 111, 201 – 6;
Watkins 1995, 353: “a ritual to assure the long life and orderly succession of the gener-
ations... a reaffirmation of the crossing of the saeculaof a hundred years.” Augustus
for his own purposes fixed on 110 years as the span, capitalizing on the flexibility of the
unit: his commemorative inscription refers to the span of 110 years (line 25 of the edi-
tion of Pighi [1965]) but also divertingly records that the games were due to be held
“after a certain number of years,” post complures annos(line 52). - “No one,” says Augustus’s commemorative inscription, “will ever again be
present at a spectacle of this kind” (tali spectaculo [nemo iterum intererit],line 54); “it is
not allowed to any mortal to see them more than once” (neque ultra quam semel ulli
mo[rtalium eos spectare licet],line 56). - Beard, North, and Price 1998, 372.
- Tony Woodman refers me to a letter written by Martin West to the Times(3
February 1998), chastising the pedants who insisted that the millennium only really
ended at the end of 2000, not the beginning. As West says, the crucial point is that “all
the numbers will change.It is like seeing 99,999 turn into 100,000 on the car mileome-
ter. That ’s what it ’s all about” (original emphasis; my thanks to Dr. West for kindly
sending me a copy of his letter). - Grant 1950, 1.
- Johnston 1991; Zerubavel 2003, index s.v. “anniversaries.”
- Grafton and Swerdlow 1998.
- Grant 1950, xii – xiii, 171. The ideal places to start in studying anniversaries in
the Roman calendar are Beard 1987 and Hopkins 1991. - Argetsinger 1992. On the importance of anniversaries in the poetry of Horace,
in particular, see Feeney 1993, 59 – 60; esp. Griffin 1997. It would be highly interesting
notes to pages 146 – 148. 277