The Roman Calendar

Have you ever wondered why September from “septem” in Latin means seven but is actually the ninth month? They actually come from the ancient Roman calendar, which initially started from March and had only 10 months. It had 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for.


Calendar of Romulus:

1. Martius - 31 Days: Month of Mars, the god of war
2. Aprilis - 30 Days: Month of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.
3. Maius - 31 Days: Month of Maia. Maia is one of the Pleiades. They are the companions of Artemis in Greek mythology.
4. Iunius - 30 Days: Month of Juno an ancient Roman goddess who is the protector of the state.
5. Quintilis - 31 Days
6. Sextilis - 30 Days
7. September - 30 Days
8. October - 31 Days
9. November - 30 Days
10. December - 30 Days
We may wonder, what is going on between December and March that is like 50 days.  Those days are the unnamed stretch of time “Winter”.

The Romans numbered the days of the month by putting place markers around the Calends (the beginning of the month), the Nones (the 5th or 7th day), and the Ides (the 15th day of March, May, July, and October and the 13th day of other months). Ides of March is the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated.  Each day was referred to how many days it fell before the Calends, the Nones, or the Ides. For example, May 11 would be referred as “5 Ides” because it is 4 days before May 15, the Ides of May.


But this calendar had a problem- it did not align with the seasons.  King Pompilius added January (Month of Janus the god of gates) and February (Month of Februa, the feast of purification).  They had the intercalary month which is the extra month added to make up for the days or months needed to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons.



(January was named after Janus, the god of doors, because he was also the god of beginnings, and January is the beginning of the year.)

The intercalary month was removed by Julius Caesar when he became the pontifex maximum (the head priest) who has the authority to change the calendar.


After Caesar’s assassination, Mark Antony renamed Quintilis as July after Caesar.










Augustus renamed Sextilis as August after him.  The emperors who followed Augustus tried to rename the months after them but it did not succeed.

This is the fragment of an ancient Roman calendar. Calends are marked as C, Nones are marked as NON and Ides are marked as EID in the Roman calendar.










“Ides of March” Ancient Roman coin








Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ides_of_March
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

What I learned today--

When I was preparing for my National Latin Exam I learned an interesting fact that I like to share

The word "jovial" or the expression "By Jove" or "Dies Iovis",  the Roman name for Thursday all refer to the Roman God Jupiter.  He is also known as Zeus in Greek mythology.


This is a painting of Jupiter from Pompeii.

The Law Office of Julius Caesar

Do you know that Julius Caesar was an attorney? You may be surprised that he was!

Back in Caesar's day, you didn't need to have a law degree to become a lawyer, because there were no law degrees to begin with! Anyone who was educated and could speak, analyze, and think could take up a case. In fact, someone who is a good speaker could attract other's attention. That was a great way to become a politician. Young Caesar was well educated and held the power of speech. For his first case, he accused Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, Governor of Macedonia, for corruption.

First, some background about how tax collection worked in the Roman provinces. In the 2nd century BCE, the Roman provinces grew well beyond Italy. Since the Senate was unable to manage them from the safety of Rome, they appointed governors for provinces outside Rome. The Senate was never paid, so being a governor was a great way to make money. The governor had to prepay the Roman Treasury a fixed amount of money and they could in turn collect whatever they wanted as taxes. The excess money was pocketed.

Now, back to Caesar's first case. He accused Dollabella of extorting the people of Macedonia, and the latter was put on trial. Caesar lost the case. Not because he was not a bad attorney, but the Senate was unwilling to rule against a ex-consul. The case was lost, but Caesar's speech won the hearts of many. Even Cicero, the famous orator, praised the speech. This was the launching point of Gaius Julius Caesar's political career.

Roman Consul

In 509 BCE, Lucius Junius Brutus and  the Roman army expelled the tyrant king Tarquin the Proud from Rome, bringing the Roman monarchy to a halt. And then the Roman Republic was born.

The Romans did not want to give power to a single person, fearing that it would be abused, as it had been by the monarchy.  Instead, every year, the Roman citizens elected two consuls. Each of them alternately held power for one month.

The Consul, or the Imperator of the Roman army, presided over the Senate. Initially, only patricians could become consul, but starting from 360 BCE, the position was open to plebeians. The consul was required to be above 41 years of age. During the time of war, the consul with military skill was chosen.   Initially they had a lot of power, but later the censorial powers were transferred to the censor and judicial powers were also taken away from them. The consul position was held for only one year at a time, and the consul could only be reelected after 10 years. This rule changed after Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who was consul twice in a row.  When their term as consul ended, they may become the proconsul (governor) for one of the Roman provinces.

During a war, consuls were granted dictatorship or imperium power. After the war, the consuls had to give up the power, but Julius Caesar refused. This led to the fall of the Roman Republic.
Under the Roman Empire, Consuls did not have much power as they previously did.

Reference
Roman Consul

Early life of Julius Caesar

Suetonius' book The Lives of the Twelve Caesars starts thus for Julius Caesar: "Annum agens sextum decimum patrem amisit", meaning Caesar lost his father when he was sixteen years old.  Caesar's life before he was sixteen is shrouded in mystery. Back in those days, there were no Amazon Cloud Drive or Facebook to record every moment of your daily life. Records of his early life are either irretrievably lost or were never written. Caesar was born in the poor neighborhood of Subura, so the latter makes sense. His father was also named Gaius Julius Caesar, and his mother was Aurelia Cotta. The cognomen Caesar means that one of his ancestors was born by Caesarian section, according to Pliny the Elder. Others believe that it was because of his ancestry- one of his ancestors may had a head of bushy hair, killed an elephant, or had bright gray eyes. (Praenomen, nomen and cognomen will be explained in a later post.)


The era in which Caesar grew up was a period of civil war. It was during the period when Lucius Cornelius Sulla reigned as dictator. Caesar's uncle, Gaius Marius, belonged to the Populares faction of the Senate, and worked for the welfare of the plebeians. The Optimates, on the other hand, were people who supported the wealthy patricians, and Sulla was one of them.  Most senators were Optimates. Sulla and Marius were political enemies, and Sulla targeted Marius' nephew.  After his father died, Caesar became a Flamen Dialis, the high priest of Jupiter.

Caesar was betrothed to Cossutia, but she was an equestrian, and a high priest of Jupiter could only marry patricians. Instead, he found love in Cornelia, the daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, another political enemy of Sulla.




When Sulla pressured Caesar to divorce his wife, he stubbornly refused. So Sulla removed Caesar from his high priest position, seized his inheritance, and his wife's dowry. Afraid for his life, Caesar left Rome and went into hiding. Eventually, his relatives were able to convince Sulla to bring him back to Rome. Sulla reluctantly accepted their entreaties, but he warned them that while they are concerned about Caesar's safety at that time, Caesar would ruin the nobles at some point in the future because he saw many Marius' in him.






References:

Suetonius: The Lives of Twelve Caesars
Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar and the Pirates of the Cilician

Cilician pirates had dominated the Mediterranean sea until they were crushed by Pompey in 67-66 BCE.
^:_:^
But why did the Roman senate take no action in stopping the piracy until then? The rich people of Rome needed slaves to work for them.  They bought those slaves from the pirates. But as time passed, the pirates became more and more powerful, and they eventually started attacking Roman cities. The senate's refusal to vanquish the pirates ended when the pirates attacked and plundered Ostia, a Roman port.

So what does this have to do with Caesar? In 75 BCE, Julius Caesar sailed to Rhodes to study oratory under Apollonius Molo (who was coincidentally the teacher of Marcus Tullius Cicero as well). On the way there, he was captured by the Cilician pirates who did not know his identity and demanded a ransom of twenty talents (approximately 620 kgs of silver). Caesar laughed at them and said he was worth fifty (approximately 1550 kgs of silver). He then sent his men to collect the money from different places. He was in captivity for thirty-eight days before his men came back with the ransom. During those thirty-eight days, he joined the pirates in their games, and wrote poems and speeches and criticized whoever did not appreciate them, calling them barbarians and threatening to have all of the pirates killed after he was released. After the ransom was paid and Caesar was set free, he sailed to Miletus and gathered some ships, and sailed back and captured the pirates.

This event of Caesar with the pirates was narrated by both  Seutonius in his The Lives of the Caesars and  Plutarch in his  Parallel Lives. 

References:

Julius Caesar
Cilician Pirates 

Did you know Julius Caesar was an auctor?

Auctor is Latin for author. Julius Caesar is often portrayed in his later years as a dictator and a powerful military commander. However, we rarely see him as an author. And yet, he was. Caesar had honed his writing skills with many works of literature- most are lost, but some survived to be read even in this day.

The De Bello Gallico (The Gallic Wars) was written by Caesar regarding his nine years as Commander in the Gallic war. He wrote it in simple, direct Latin.  Someone with his background could have written it in fancy Latin, but he didn't. Why? Back in days of the Roman Republic, much of the senate were wealthy patricians, and only they could understand the more complex forms of Latin. Caesar wanted the support of the plebeians, so he kept the language simple to be understood by the common people. This will be further discussed in a future post. The famous starting words of the book are "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres...", meaning "All of Gaul is divided into three parts."



The Bellum Civile (The Civil War) was about the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey The Great), lasting from 49 BCE to 48 BCE. The book ends abruptly, meaning that either parts of the book are lost or the entire book had not been completed, and he was assassinated before he could.

The next few works are the lost writings of Caesar. They are mostly gone, but either some fragments have been found or they were mentioned by other famous authors. When Cato the younger died, Cicero wrote a pamphlet in praise of him. Since Caesar opposed Cato's political actions, he wrote the Anticato, which criticized that pamphlet. It is considered rude because he criticized a person after his death. The book Iter describes his route from Rome to Hispania.
The praises of Hercules, the Oedipus, were suppressed by Emperor Augustus for an unknown reason.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_by_Julius_Caesar