12. The Roman months
THE RECKONING OF TIME
12. THE ROMAN MONTHS
In the debate of Chorus and Praetextatus,130 we read of the reason why the Romans have months of varying length. Romulus, when he had ordered the state of his realm with shrewd but rustic intelligence, took the beginning of the month /320/ from the day when it happened that the new
Moon was seen. Because it did not always appear on the same day,131 but for a variety of reasons was sometimes seen earlier and sometimes later, it happened that when it occurred later, more days were alloted to the previous month, and when it appeared earlier, fewer. But [Romulus] gave to each month a ¢xed number of days corresponding to the ¢rst instance,132 [which it retained] in perpetuity. Thus it happened that some have thirty, and some thirty-one days.133
[Romulus] dedicated the ¢rst month to Mars, whose son he wished to be taken for, because it was thought that in this month Juno gave birth to Mars in Phrygia.134 This month was therefore deemed to be the ¢rst of the year; a more likely [explanation] is that the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months preserve from of old a name derived from a number
[counted] from [March].135 The second month they called April, ''opening'' [aperilem] so to speak, because then the heavens, the earth and the sea are opened up to sailors, farmers and those who observe the hours [horoscopis],136 when the clouds, hailstorms and tempests of 130 This text is a modi¢ed excerpt from Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12^15, found in Bede's ''Sirmond'' computus anthology, Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 309, fols. 101r^
105v, and also in the related codices Geneva, Bibliothe' que de l'Universite¤ 50, fols. 163r^
164v and Cologne, Dombibliothek 83 (ii), fols. 204r^205v, both incomplete. Jones, ''The 'Lost' Sirmond Manuscript'', 217, and BOT 348. Bede also used it in De temporibus 6. Citations here are made to the original text of Macrobius, but it should be noted that Bede knew only this excerpt, and was unaware of the identity of the author.
131 I.e. at regular intervals.
132 I.e. corresponding to the lunations as they happen to have occurred in the ¢rst year of his lunar calendar.
133 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.15.5^6 (70.8^18).
134 Cf. ibid. 1.12.5 (54.20^22). This and subsequent explanations for the Roman month names are also found in Isidore, DNR 4.2^4 (187.7^189.31), Etym. 5.32.3^11, and Augustine, Contra Faustum 18.5, ed. J. Zycha, CSEL 25.1 (1891):494.5^17.
135 Isidore, DNR 4.2 (187.8^10).
136 Horoscopus properly designates the point on the eastern horizon where a constellation rises, and by extension, a horoscope in the astrological sense. This term is not found in Macrobius or Isidore (it does not even appear as an interpolation in the copy of the Chorus and Praetextatus found in the ''Sirmond manuscript'') but it seems that Bede ^
TRANSLATION
winter are driven away. Trees and herbs also begin to open up into bud, and every living thing to open in bringing forth its young.137 [Romulus] established May138 asthethird and June as the fourth month incommemorationofthe''elders'' [maiorum] and ''juniors'' into which hehaddivided the populace, so that one part might protect the republic by arms, and the other by counsel. Others contend that Maia, the mother of Mercury, gave her name to May, and substantiate this largely from the fact that in this month all the merchants sacri¢ce to Maia, /321/ and likewise to Mercury. The month of June is either named after a segment of the populace, as we said, or as Cingius139 thinks, was previously called ''Iunonius'' by the Latins. This appellation for the month lingered for a long time amongst the men of old, but from ''Iunonius'' it was called ''Iunius'' after some of the letters fell out. The shrine of Juno Moneta was dedicated on the ¢rst of June. The month of July took the name ''Quintilis'' because of its number, which it preserved even after two months were inserted before March. But afterwards it was called ''Julius'' in honour of the dictator
Julius Caesar by a law brought in by the consul Mark Antony, son of Mark, because Julius was born in that month, on the fourth ides of Quintilis. The month of August was formerly called ''Sextilis'' until this honour was bestowed upon Augustus by decree of the Senate, because on the very ¢rst day of that month he defeated Antony and Cleopatra and established his rule over the Roman people. The months of September,
October, November and December retain their original titles, signifying by their name the number of the month from spring, that is, from March, or else because the rains140 arrive in these [months]. or his source ^ thought that a horoscopus was a person, like the farmer or sailor, who would bene¢t from a clear sky. If Bede interpreted the word to mean ''someone who investigates the hours'', he could simply be suggesting that the heavens are clear enough in April to permit the telling of the hours by sundial during the day, and by the stars at night.
137 Cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.14 (56.11^20).
138 The explanations of the month-names from ''[Romulus] established May . . .'' up to ''The former have their nones on the ¢fth day of the month, the latter on the seventh'', are quasi-verbatim (with gaps) from Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.16^37 (56.24^61.3). The sentence about the months September to December is derived from Isidore, Etym. 5.33.11.
139 A Roman antiquary; his works on the history of the Roman calendar, now lost, are known to us only through Macrobius' references.
140 Imbres, from imber, -bris, c.f. September, -bris, etc.This etymology is intruded into the Macrobius text from Isidore, Etym. 5.33.11. Cf. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.35, ed. A.J.
Fridh, CCSL 96 (1973):40.11^13: quod ab ipsis quoque mensibus datur intelligi, quando ex
THE RECKONING OF TIME
This was the measure ordained by Romulus for the year: it established a year of ten months, having three hundred and four days. He arranged the months so that four of them ^ March, May, Quintilis and October ^ would have 31 days; the other six would have 30 days.141 The former have their nones on the ¢fth day of the month, the latter on the /322/ seventh. In the case of those which have their nones on the seventh, the kalends are counted back from the ides to the seventeenth day, while for those which have their nones on the ¢fth, the beginning of the kalends goes back to the eighteenth day.142
But since this number [i.e. 31 or 30 days] corresponded neither to the course of the Sun nor to the reckoningof the Moon, it sometimes happened that cold occurred in the summer months of the year, and contrariwise, heat in the winter months. Whenever this happened, a number of days not ascribedtoanymonthwasaddedtothatseasonoftheyearuntiltheposition of the heavens was seen to be appropriate for that particular month.143 But Numa, who succeeded [Romulus], added ¢fty days, so that the year was extended to 354 days, which he believed comprised twelve revolutions of the Moon. To these days added by himself, Numa also added another six subtracted from those months which had 30 days ^ one day from each month ^ and made 56 days. He divided them equally into two new months, and the ¢rst of the two he called January. He wished it to be the ¢rst of the year, the month of the two-faced god, as it were, looking backwards at the end of the bygone year and forward to the beginning of the one to come.144
Some think that January got its name because it is the threshold and door [ianua] of the year.145 The second he called after Februus, that is, Pluto, who was believed to rule over puri¢catory sacri¢ce. /323/In that month, in which [Numa] ordained thatjustice be donetothe gods ofthe underworld, thecity was obliged to make puri¢catorysacri¢ces.146
But the Christian religion altered this custom of puri¢catory sacri¢ce numero imbrium futurorum competenter nomina susceperunt (''. . . which may be understood from the very months themselves, when they ¢ttingly derive their names from the rains which are in the o⁄ng''). Cf. Jones, BOT 348.
141 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12.38 (61.4^8).
142 Ibid. 1.12.4 (54.16^19).
143 Ibid. 1.12.39 (61.8^14).
144 Ibid. 1.13.1^3 (61.15^62.4).
145 Isidore, Etym. 5.33.3.
146 Cf. Saturnalia 1.13.3 (61.28^62.4); Isidore, Etym. 5.33.4.
TRANSLATION
for the better, when in that same month, on the feast of St Mary, the whole populace with the priests and ministers goes on procession through the churches and the city neighbourhoods, all singing devout hymns, and carrying in their hands burning candles given them by the bishop. As this good custom grew, it provided a model for the conduct of other feasts of the blessed Mother and perpetual Virgin as well, not in the ¢ve-year lustration of a worldly empire, but in the everlasting memory of the heavenly kingdom where, according to the parable of the wise virgins, all the elect shall go out to meet the Bridegroom, their
King, with the lamps of their good deeds alight, and then shall enter into the heavenly city with Him.147
Shortly afterwards Numa, in honour of the odd number, added a day, which he gave to January, so that both in the year and in the individual months, the odd number is preserved; the exception is February, as if both diminution and an even number were ¢tting for the infernal regions.148
Thus the Romans, following this arrangement of Pompilius, calculated their year according to the course of the Moon like the Greeks, and so they were obliged to institute an intercalated month after the fashion /324/ of the Greeks. Now the Greeks, when they observed that they had carelessly ordained their year at 354 days ^ for it was evident from the course of the Sun, which completes its course through the zodiac in 3651
4 days, that 111
147 Jones (BOT 348^349) claims that this very early description of the Feast of the Puri¢cation is original to Bede. A sermon ascribed, but probably falsely, to Ildefonsus,
(Sermo 10, PL 96.277), replicates Bede's statement closely, but is possibly copied from The Reckoning of Time. Ps.-Eligius, Homelia 2 (PL 87.597^603) is also described as a postBedan text. But see I. Deug-Su, ''La festa della puri¢cazione in occidente (secoli IV^
VIII)'', Studi medievali ser. 3, 15 (1974):143^216, who accepts the Idelfonsus and Eligius texts as genuine, but credits Bede with the earliest description of the Candlemas procession; see esp. pp. 146^149, 147 n. 10 for parallels in Bede's sermons, and 168^182 for parallels in the sermon on the Octave of Christmas and In Lucam. Certainly, Bede is the ¢rst writer to suggest that the Puri¢cation was instituted to supplant a pagan festivity, probably Lupercalia. Even in the 7th century, this ancient fertility rite, along with the celebration of the New
Year on 1 January, remained a stubbornly ineradicable vestige of the ancient Roman civic calendar: see Michel Meslin, La Fe" te des kalendes de janvier dans l'empire romain, Collection Latomus 115 (Brussels: Latomus, 1970):ch. 3. For the parable of the wise virgins, see
Matthew 25.10.
148 The Romans considered even numbers unlucky: cf. Vergil, Eclogues 8.75, ed.
Wendell Clausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994):23, where it is stated that the gods like odd numbers (numero deus impare gaudet). The Laon-Metz glossator furnishes an interesting Christian variation on this theme: God particularly likes odd numbers because He himself is ''odd'', having no equal: p. 323 ad lineam 84.