Mommsen 1859, 200 – 201: see Hanell 1946, 69, for acknowledgment of Momm-
sen’s crucial insight. As we shall see, it was no part of the original purpose of the lists
of consuls to assist historical chronology, but they can certainly work in tandem with
the calendar to make it possible to mark points in time.
There is no doubt that the term fastiwas applied first to the calendar and then
later, by extension, to the closely linked list of chief magistrates. The word is an adjec-
tive from fas(divine right); fasitself derives from for/fari,“to utter,” and the term dies
fastirefers to days on which proper utterance is allowed. A digest of days when proper
utterance was allowed came to be called fasti: Neue Pauly(Rüpke), s.v.
Hanell 1946, 69: ‘Im Grunde ist nämlich die Eponymenliste ein Verzeichnis der
nach Eponymen benannten Jahre, ist also kalendarischer Natur, ein Teil des Kalen-
ders.” Hanell’s achievement is rightly stressed by Ridley (1980, 283 – 85); cf. Rüpke
1995a, 185 – 86; for criticisms of Hanell’s views, especially the idea that originally there
was only one name per year, see Michels 1967, 215 – 17; Cornell 1995, 221 – 22.
Bickerman 1980, 69.
Once again, Mommsen (1859, 208 n. 394) first made the point, stressing that fasti
tribunicii, aedilicii,and so on are misnomers, for these officials did not give their names
to the year: cf. Hanell 1946, 69.
On these close links, see Degrassi 1947, xiii; 1963, xxi; Taylor and Holland 1952,
140: “The two types ofFasti,consular list and calendar, enumerations of years and
days, belonged together, and at least six of the thirty-five consular lists which have
come to light were accompanied by calendars.” Further, the forum at Praeneste that
displayed the famous “calendrical” Fasti Praenestini also had “consular” fasti,which
were almost certainly put up at the same time: Degrassi 1947, 260. On the many other
kinds of time charts in addition to these two, which adorned the so-called Codex-
Calendar of 354, each evoking its own dimension of the past, see the important study
of Salzman 1990, esp. 24: there are birthdays of the emperors, signs of the zodiac, urban
prefects, and bishops of Rome.
Taylor and Holland 1952, esp. 138; for Janus as the first god to receive sacrifice,
see Cic. Nat. D.2.67, with the copious documentation ad loc. of Pease (1955 – 58); Wis-
sowa 1912, 103. On the reform of 153 b.c.e., see p. 171 below.
Degrassi 1947, xiii; Rüpke 1995a, esp. 199 – 200.
Taylor and Holland 1952, 140; doubted by Rüpke 1995a, 194.
See Salzman 1990, 35 – 36, for the Codex-Calendar as the culmination of a tra-
dition of paired consular and calendrical fasti;cf. Rüpke 1997, 81 – 84.
Popularized by S. J. Gould (1987).
A. Barchiesi 1991, 6 – 7.
Laurence and Smith 1995 – 96, 145, on the imperial fasti:“In effect, linear events
of history were inscribed into circular time.”
Fantham 1985.
notes to pages 168 – 169
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