Posted by:
Carl
on
3/3/2010 6:59:55 PM
Today I worked exclusively on the calendar. I have festivals detailed along with rites, rituals and events up through Iunius. Normally this would be only four months, but I started in Ianuarius, so I'm half-way done.
I'm using the civil calendar of Numa Pompilius according to Plutarch and Macrobius (as those two agree and Ovid does not) as my basis and assuming that nothing untoward has occurred since he laid it down in terms of dates getting too out of synch with the seasons they're supposed to represent. In other words, December through Februarius is still "winter". Also, there will be no Intercalary month this year.
I've removed the market days that I had laid down in the calendar and have opted to add them back in once I've completed the full festival schedule for the year. By doing it this way, I can move the market days around so they're nearly always 8 days apart and don't conflict with festivals and other important rituals.
I'm having some trouble assigning the character of the day. In the fasti, which was a record of the days of the month, each day had character associated with it which designated things like whether legal matters could be heard on that day, or part of that day, whether comitia (public meetings) could be held and which days were public holidays, meaning no work could be done and temples were closed. Some of this information is available, but it's limited.
The problem is that the only complete calendars that survive are post-Augustus, which is several hundred years after I'm basing the campaign. This is also after the Julian reform, which significantly changed the calendar. In Caesar's defense, the calendar really needed it by his time.
So, in effect, I've put myself in the role of the Pontiffs, the priests who laid out the calendar each year, or as it seems each month, in order to make sure that the rites, rituals and festivals stayed aligned with the time of year in which they were supposed to occur. I can see why this job was important and also why it was so complicated and subject to political constraints. There are a lot of things to account for -- after all, the calendar is the schedule of the people and the city. You have to plant at certain times, harvest at certain times, make babies at certain times, give the workers time off and set aside time to hear lawsuits, and conduct civic business.
I'm hoping to have this completed by tomorrow, but we'll see.
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