Revealed by the excavations of Buchner (1982); we return to this complex
below, p. 206. Wallace-Hadrill (1997, 16 – 18) well brings out how the calendrical work
of Caesar and Augustus depends on specialized knowledge to produce a rationalization
that massively reinforces their “social and political authority.”
On parapegmata, see Taub 2003, 15 – 69; Hannah 2005, 59 – 65; especially
Lehoux (forthcoming), a systematic reexamination from which I have learned much.
My account here merely gives a précis of the valuable overview in Lehoux’s chapter 4.
I quote from the end of the first section of Lehoux’s chapter 4 (forthcoming);
emphasis is in the original. On the gulf between the calendar and parapegma tradition
in Latin, see also Rüpke 1995c, 299 – 300. This separation between the two traditions
helps to explain the near-total absence of astronomical information in calendrical fasti
(on which see Gee 2000, 10 – 11). In the Republican calendar it would of course have
been impossible to plot this information anyway, since the calendar made no pretense
to track the natural year; but even after the Julian reform, when it would have been
possible, the tradition of demarcation remained.
Varro’s discussion of the Terminalia explicitly mentions the Republican inter-
calation (6.13), and the fifth month is still Quintilis, not Iulius (6.34): cf. Fraschetti
1990, 11. Yet in July 45 Cicero was still expecting the book (Att.13.12.3 = Shackleton
Bailey 1965 – 70, 320.3).
See Hinds 2005b for the links in structure between this “Book of Time” and
the preceding “Book of Place,” De Lingua Latina5; Hinds well brings out the crucial
shared underpinnings of the “civil” and the “natural.”
For a New Zealander who is fond of Italy and of anniversaries, the Robigalia
has a special place: as New Zealand ’s most popular festival, Anzac Day, it commemo-
rates the day the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli in 1915,
and as la Festa della Liberazione it commemorates the popular revolt against the Nazis
and Fascists in Italy in 1945 (witnessed by the Second New Zealand Division, cam-
paigning in northern Italy).
He gives the date of the Quinquatrus (in March) because he explains it as
falling fivedays after the Ides (6.14); he likewise dates the “lesser” Quinquatrus, to the
Ides of June (6.17); the Vinalia are dated to 19 Sextilis (a.d. XII Kal. Sept.,6.20), to
differentiate them from the earlier Vinalia (23 April); the Larentalia are said to be cel-
ebrated “on the sixth day after the Saturnalia” (6.23).
My thanks to Steve Miller for enlightenment on these agricultural matters.
Similarly, in the De Legibus,written in the late 50s b.c.e.(Rawson 1991, 125 –
29), Cicero can provide some idealized legislation to ensure that intercalation is prop-
erly performed, so as to allow offerings offirst fruits and flocks to be made at the right
time (2.29).
Michels 1967, 16.
North (1989, 602 – 3) well argues that it is a misunderstanding of the Republi-
notes to pages 197 – 200
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