Well, I hope you enjoyed what I had to say about Fasti and January. I mentioned a couple of videos which go into the whole ‘J’ thing and here they are:
Fasti
I mentioned how we had few which survived. Here’s the oldest surviving Fasti and its reconstruction.
The days are in columns with letters to the right (and notes). Each month is abbreviated, once you see this it becomes quite recognisable. Not quite excel – but close!
January.
As mentioned, Janus was an old deity and a very interesting one – there’s a good article on him here.
The Compitalia sounded like a fun festival to be a part of. Here’s a good piece on the Lares who I mentioned and who Augustus pointed towards his political gain.
Photo by Sebastia Giralt (Flickr)
Fresco from Pompeii possibly showing part of the Compitalia
As for Carmenta, her worship is a good example of how permeable Roman culture could be, take Mithras for example (or even Isis at Pompeii)
Reading List.
Ovid, Fasti.
Virgil, Aeneid
Adkins L & Adkins, R. Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome.
Bert Lott, J. The neighbourhoods of Augustan Rome.
Fantham, E. The role of Evander in Ovid’s Fasti.
Fowler, WW. The Roman festivals of the period of the Republic.
Goldsworth, A. Caesar.
Meisner, DA. The evolution of the Roman calendar.
Michels, AK. Roman Festivals.
Rupke, J. The Roman calendar from Numa to Constantine.
Stek, TS. Roman ritual in the countryside? The Compitalia and the shrines of the Lares Compitales.
Transcription.
A cursed arch, calendar shifts and street celebrations. It’s part one of a miniseries about the Festivals of Rome on the ancient History Hound podcast.
Hi and welcome, my name’s Neil and this is the first of a series of episodes about Festivals in ancient Rome. These will involve me talking you through the year and pointing out some well-known, and lesser-known festivals which were happening around the time of the early Imperial Period, so from the beginning of the 1st century AD.
As you might have guessed there are quite a lot of festivals, something I knew but hadn’t realised just how many. I’m surprised that the Romans ever got anything done to be honest. The outcome of this is that I’ll be dedicating a month or two for each episode and I’m starting with January, and I’ve picked out two festivals to talk about as well as other aspects of this month.
However, I’m going to start the episode with a bit about the Roman calendar to give this all some context.
As ever any ratings or reviews where you listen to this podcast are greatly appreciated. You can find me on various social media sites. I’m ancientblogger on X, TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram and on YouTube with the ancientblogger channel. On Reddit this podcast has its own community called Ancient History Hound where I post all types of content. Finally there’s my website, www.ancientblogger.com
OK then let’s get to it.
The Roman calendar and its development is a complex and nuanced thing. Don’t worry, I’m not going down the various rabbit holes which the topic holds. Instead I’ll start with a fact which I think gives an example of what I mean.
The word calendar comes from the Latin word calendarium. And this word translates to something along the lines of account book or register of debts. The reason for this is that the calendae were the first days of a month where loans were given and interest was due. It’s not really anything to do with the segregation and marking of time. That association came much later on.
This trend continues when we consider what word the Romans used – fasti. This word translates along the lines of a list of court sittings. Fasti would have the months of the year with the days of each in columns. Days were marked by the letters A to H, Rome had 8-day weeks. In the next column there would be another letter, or letters, which gave information about that day. For example, F would mean that you could present a new legal case to a praetor, N or NF meant you couldn’t. C referred to a people’s assembly. Other letters indicated market days, festivals and temple foundation days.
The first fasti was said to have been created around the end of the 4th century BC when an aedile called Gnaeus Flavius published them in the Roman Forum. What’s curious here is that this was a controversial act as the priests had no input– the implication is that this was done to help standardise and give more transparency to when events could and should occur. There may have been a tension between the religious and the political which is what the fasti looked to clear up.
Originally fasti seem to have been painted, the earliest surviving fasti, the Fasti Antiates maiores, dates to between 84 and 55 BC. Though in fragments a reconstruction has been made which measures 1.16 m high and 2.5 metres wide. In the early imperial period we have evidence of more painted fasti but also ones carved in stone or marble.
The development of the Roman year was inherently linked to the development of the fasti and this itself is a curious thing. Tradition has it that under Romulus there was a 10-month year which started with March and ended with December. The time between the end of December and March seemingly left unlabelled. For the later Romans this might explain the naming conventions of some of the months. July was originally named Quintilis, which means the 5th month, Sextilis, later August, the sixth month and then September, October, November, December. The 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month respectively. This only works if you have March as the starting point of the year. There’s a bit more to why March was considered so important, and I’ll get to that in the relevant episode.
Even if Romulus had created a 10-month year it was ephemeral. Numa, the second Roman king, created the 12-month calendar. However, there was still a problem for Rome and its Fasti. The Romans used lunar months which created a deficit – their year only had 355 days. The fact that this didn’t align with the solar year of 365 days wasn’t lost on the Romans and they added in additional days, known as intercalation, to try and make up for the shortfall.
However, it was an ongoing struggle and intercalation was continually required. What was needed was a reform of the calendar and this happened under a familiar name.
In 46 BC Julius Caesar stepped forward to solve the problem by recalibrating the fasti. He didn’t do this alone, he was helped by Sosigenes (a Greek), Egyptian astronomers and Marcus Flavius. Two extra days were added to the months of January, Sextilis and December with a single day added to April, June, September and November. February was notable in not having any days added and the reasons for this I’ll get to when I cover that month. The Julian calendar began on 1st January 45 BC, it now had 365 days with a leap year every 3 years. This was corrected in AD 1582 with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
The names of the month stayed the same, apart from Quintilis which was renamed Iulius or as we know it July after Caesar in 44 BC and Sextilis as August after Augustus in AD 8.
I should add at this point that Caesar was operating from a practical perspective, Rome needed an effective calendar. But there were also political concerns. The previous calendar might provide a few loopholes for someone to exploit, say extending their office past the normal number of days or causing issues when passing legislation. I recently had a comment on Spotify thanking me for flagging when I am being sarcastic. I am waving the sarcasm flags when I say that I’m sure Julius Caesar was concerned about these potential loopholes from an objective standpoint because he would never do that sort of thing. It wasn’t say, because he was worried that now as he was effectively in charge that these might be used against him. I hope that was clear enough.
I should also introduce another Roman – Publius Ovidius Naso, or as you may have heard of him. Ovid. He was a famous poet in the time of Augustus and much of his work was, say, in the love genre. In AD 8 he was exiled by Augustus personally to Tomis, the modern-day coastal city of Constanta in Romania. Exactly what he did wasn’t clear, but it must have been serious. It was here that he spent the rest of his life, dying around AD 17. It was also likely that this was where he wrote his work the Fasti which was published after his death. The Fasti covers the festivals of the Roman calendar and is an invaluable source, though as with any source it needs to be given proper scrutiny. Sadly we only have the first six books covering the first six months of the year.
Ok, we are ready to look into what was going on in January. But before I do here’s something from the Partial Historians.
Thanks to Dr Rad and Dr G – you can find me as a guest on their podcast where I spoke about some of the sites in early Rome. I should point out that this isn’t a paid add. Long-time listeners might recall that I like to swap promos and give you the listener some other listening options – so go and check them out when you get the chance.
To January then and to begin with what we can learn from its name. The Romans knew January as Ianuaris and here we come across something which you might have noticed elsewhere when reading or hearing about Rome, the letter J.
In the episode notes on ancientblogger.com I have added a couple of videos which explain this in more detail. In short the Romans didn’t have the letter J. This was a later addition which facilitated an issue with the letter ‘I’. This letter could be pronounced as either ye, as in ‘yet’ or i. One way for later translators to make sense of this was introducing the letter J to indicate the ‘y’ pronunciation. In the 16th century it became a letter in its own right. Various languages had different ways to pronounce it – in some Swedish words j is pronounced as ‘ye’ – think of Fjord, this is the same in German, think of the word yes or ja – spelt with a J but not pronounced Jar. In Spanish it’s pronounced ‘huuuh’.
Getting back to the latin – this means names like Julius, Juvenal, and Jupiter were pronounced yulius, yuvenal and yupiter – or something like that. Modern translations still keep the J – and I certainly use J for latin pronunciation, but just so you know.
The second point about the name relates to the deity involved. Janus, was an old deity and not one which we often think of. If I were to ask you to name 5 Roman deities I don’t think it would often feature, and I include myself in that. But Janus was an important god and one which didn’t have a counterpart in the Greek pantheon. He was a god of thresholds and was often depicted with a face on opposite sides of his head which symbolised this characteristic.
Janus appears in Ovid’s Fasti and talks to him directly. He is the gateway to all gods and as such he demands a respect almost above any of them. In some instances he was referred to ahead of other Roman deities when a prayer was being made. That he was the god of beginnings and gates makes sense when considering the transitionary position of his month. It’s the start of the new year, but also the end of the previous one.
I’m going to start January with a festival which wasn’t inscribed or painted on a fasti. Some festivals in Rome were known as Feraie conceptivae which meant that the date of them would change each year. In the case of this festival the date was announced 8 days before it took place and by a Praetor.
The Compitalia was a festival of borders, of crossroads and boundaries. The founding of the festival was linked to Servius Tullius, the 6th legendary King of Rome who split the city into four regions. The implication here is that it was a very old festival, but Rome knew little about its early history and if you listened to my miniseries on Rome’s foundation and its kings you will hear me make this point numerous times.
By the time of the 1st century AD the Compitalia wasn’t celebrated by four regions of the city, instead it was celebrated in each vicus. There are several words you can use to describe a vicus, perhaps neighbourhood is the best. These were small administrative areas which included houses, other buildings and businesses. Most would have had a crossroads or compitum, which the Compitalia was named after. It was here that a shrine stood to the Lares, a pair of protective spirits who guarded the vicus. You may have heard this name before as Roman households often had a shrine to the Lares which protected the family.
Each vicus elected officers, magistri vici, who acted as low-level administrators. They would report up the administrative chain and helped deal with issues such as crime or food supply. Their role in the Compitalia was to ensure that it all went well.
In terms of numbers Pliny the Elder reckoned there were 265 vici by his time at Rome and one estimation gives a number of around 2,800 to 3,800 residents in each vicus. Please note that these are very speculative and it may have varied greatly given the different sized vici and also depending on when exactly.
As mentioned the festivities were centred around the shrine of the Lares at the crossroads. Here a pig was sacrificed after being led around the vicus, possibly as a purification ritual. It’s fair to say this was very much a communal festival, slaves, freedmen and the poor all contributed and shared in the celebrations. Each household donated a honey cake; households would hang garlands on their doors. Families would also hang woollen dolls and balls of wool either near the shrine or outside their doors. There has been some debate as to the function of this with one argument being that it carried a practical reason as the dolls represented the residents with the balls of wool representing slaves. These could be counted and so a census of each neighbourhood could be taken.
Macrobius, who wrote in the early 5th century AD, offered a particularly gruesome element of the festival in early Rome. Though he was writing long after the period I am discussing he noted that originally the festival required an offering of boys to Mania, the mother of the Lares. If you’ve listened to my episodes on Human Sacrifice you will have heard me mentioned more than once how this practice was rumoured to have happened in both Greece and Rome. In this instance Macrobius wrote that the grisly requirement came under the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, the infamous – and last – King of Rome. It was soon replaced when he was exiled and instead heads of poppies and garlic replaced those of the boys.
By the time of the Late Republic the Compitalia had its own games, including street shows and plays. You can imagine how these must have varied from vicus to vicus and, knowing how people have always worked, I suspect there was a fair amount of competition between vici which bordered each other. A great point I read suggested that the celebrations in each vicus may well have varied depending on the residents. Ancient Rome was a diverse place and so perhaps a vicus with a large population of, say, peoples from Greece, Egypt, or Spain might have had their culture manifested in different foods and entertainment. I like to think so.
As for the shrines – these weren’t necessarily small. One surviving shrine in Rome has been found, the Compitum Ancilum. This was accessed by four small steps and stood on a podium. It measured just under 3m by 3m and stood 1.4 metres high. This was a sort of very small temple.
But what of the Compitalia in the countryside? We know that this festival wasn’t just celebrated in Rome. Our information is scant, but it seems that it was popular, Cato mentioned how if the master was away the overseer of a villa would take charge of the festival. This was sometimes a senior slave, and here we meet that recurring theme of the Compitalia as a festival for the poor and lower classes.
In 7 BC Augustus enacted a wide set of reforms at Rome which affected the Compitalia or at least shifted its focus. He organised the city of Rome into 14 regions and the various vici which sat within these regions saw repairs and renovation. The Lares in each vici were replaced with Lares Augusti, in honour of the emperor. The political setup in each vicus was standardised with four magistri in each vicus. However, these weren’t your standard Roman politicians, they were selected from the poorer classes. A list dated to the Augustan period has 86 names of magistri vici and of those only four can be confirmed as free born people.
Though the Compitalia preserved its links with the lower classes it was now pointed towards the emperor. Augustus had kept much of it as it had been but just used it to remind the people of each neighbourhood who their Emperor was.
Where the Compitalia had its roots deep in Rome’s mythical past with the Roman kings the second festival went even further back in time. One of the curious things about Rome’s foundation myth is that it had a prequel of sorts.
Rome had the famous foundation myth involving the twins but there was also the story of Aeneas. He was a Trojan who escaped Troy’s destruction and eventually ended up settling near to Rome. This story was made famous by Virgil’s poem, the Aeneid in which a number of associations between the mythical past and the Rome of his time were made. The poem was for the emperor Augustus and it’s no surprise then that he is mentioned a few times in prophesies as the wonderful ruler Rome will one day get.
Aeneas didn’t found Rome, that moment was generations away, but he was given as a sort of forebearer of the Roman people. By the way, if you’ve listened to my episode on Rome’s foundation myth you might remember how the later historians Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus scurried through the period of time between Aeneas and the foundation myth involving the twins.
In the Aeneid Aeneas was joined by a character called Evander who had moved from Greece and established a settlement called Pallantium near what would be the Palatine hill. As such he was there before Aeneas arrived. But it’s Evander’s mother which the festival, the Carmentalia, was named after.
The mythology behind Carmenta is varied, perhaps a nymph but certainly a deity of some form with the gift of prophecy. In Ovid’s Fasti Carmenta arrives with Evander on a ship and close to the shore she appeals to the gods of this new land before issuing a prophecy. This includes how the hills will one day rule the world – a reference to the hills of Rome. She also states that, and I quote “the safety of the country will lie with Augustus’ house” end quote.
Perhaps this was Ovid trying to get back into the good books of the Imperial house from his exile.
In the Fasti Ovid describes Carmenta as having two companions, Postvorta and Antevorta. These are also referred to as different aspects of Carmenta and translate as forward looking and backward looking respectively and you can see how these aspects link to a goddess of prophecy. However, these have also been considered as acting in the other capacity Carmenta had – as a goddess of childbirth. Here the two elements might represent the specific aspect of Carmenta who oversaw the birth of a child born – namely whether the child was born headfirst or feet first.
There was a temple to Carmenta was based near the foot of the Capitoline Hill and a gate called the Portus Carmentalis. The temple is mentioned by Livy in his account of the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC – the cliffs above it were scaled by a group of them. However, as they reached the top the alarm was raised by a flock of sacred geese in Juno’s temple. As for the Portus Carmentalis, this too had a myth about it.
The gate consisted of two arches, essentially, two ways you could pass through it. In the early 5th century BC the Fabii clan decided to take on the rival city of Veii alone and left through the right-hand arch. They fell to an ambush and never came back and as a result the right-hand arch gained a notoriety about it. Superstitious Romans wouldn’t leave the city by that arch, only using it to return. However, this doesn’t all add up. The gate was in the Servian Walls of Rome which were built in the 4th century BC, so around 80 years after those Fabii met their end.
We know little about the worship and festival of Carmentalia – but it must have been an important one. For a starter it occurred on two days, the 11th and 15th of January. Presumably the days between had activities. The double dates for her fit within her dual aspect, the Postvorta and Antevorta. Her worship had a dedicated Flamen – this was a type of priest and there were only 15 of these in Rome, again, perhaps reflecting its significance. One final fact is what wasn’t permitted – animal skins. No animal skins were allowed in her temple, so you couldn’t enter wearing, say a leather item or holding anything made of leather. It’s been thought that animal skins carried with them an association of death and this wasn’t wanted in a temple for a deity involved in childbirth.
And just on the subject of death and childbirth – I sometimes come across the ‘average age of Romans’ misconception. This posits that the average age was something like 30 or 35 and therefore if you were someone in your 40s and 50s walking around Rome people would somehow be amazed by what they saw.
This isn’t true – as an example consider the age restrictions for senior political positions in Rome. However, there is a basis for this, and it results from statistics. Infant mortality was very high in antiquity and what this does is bring the ‘average age’ down. So whilst the average age at birth is low anyone making it past infancy would see their life expectancy increase dramatically. If you made it to 10 then you could easily see 50, 60 or even older. That said this does come with the variables of what your situation was. In short people in Rome didn’t consider 35 years of age as old, they might have felt it but they would hopefully have a good few decades left.
However, the life expectancy of this episode has been reached. Whether the next one is just on February or a February/March combo isn’t clear as yet, but rest assured there is a lot to say on either.
Until next time – keep safe and stay well.
