1.
Roman calendar
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The Roman calendar is the calendar used by the Roman kingdom and republic. The original calendar consisted of 10 months beginning in spring with March and these months ran for 38 nundinal cycles, each forming a kind of eight day week ended by religious rituals and a public market. The winter period was used to create January and February. The legendary early kings Romulus and Numa were traditionally credited with establishing this early fixed calendar, in particular, the kalends, nones, and ides seem to have derived from the first sighting of the crescent moon, the first-quarter moon, and the full moon respectively. The system ran well short of the year, and it needed constant intercalation to keep religious festivals. For superstitious reasons, such intercalation occurred within the month of February even after it was no longer considered the last month. Having won his war with Pompey, Caesar used his position as Romes chief pontiff to enact a calendar reform in 46 BC, in order to bring the calendar back to its proper place, Augustus was obliged to suspend intercalation for a few decades. The original Roman calendar is believed to have been a lunar calendar whose months began from the first signs of a new crescent moon. Because a lunar cycle is about 29½ days long, such months would have varied between 29 and 30 days, Romes 8-day week, the nundinal cycle, was shared with the Etruscans, who used it as the schedule of royal audiences. It was presumably a feature of the calendar and was credited in Roman legend variously to Romulus and Servius Tullius. The Romans themselves described their first organized year as one with ten fixed months, such a decimal division fit general Roman practice. The four 31-day months were called full and the others hollow and its 304 days made up exactly 38 nundinal cycles. Later Roman writers credited this calendar to Romulus, their legendary first king and culture hero, although this was common with other practices and traditions whose origin had been lost to them. Rüpke also finds the coincidence of the length of the supposed Romulan year with the length of the first ten months of the Julian calendar to be suspicious, other traditions existed alongside this one, however. Plutarchs Parallel Lives recounts that Romuluss calendar had been solar but adhered to the principle that the year should last for 360 days. Months were employed secondarily and haphazardly, with some counted as 20 days, the attested calendar of the Roman Republic was quite different. It followed Greek calendars in assuming a lunar cycle of 29½ days and a year of 12½ synodic months. The additional two months of the year were January and February, the month was sometimes known as Mercedonius
2.
Ancient Rome
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In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
3.
Glossary of ancient Roman religion
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The vocabulary of ancient Roman religion was highly specialized. Its study affords important information about the religion, traditions and beliefs of the ancient Romans and this legacy is conspicuous in European cultural history in its influence on later juridical and religious vocabulary in Europe, particularly of the Western Church. For theonyms, or the names and epithets of gods, see List of Roman deities, for public religious holidays, see Roman festivals. For temples see the List of Ancient Roman temples, individual landmarks of religious topography in ancient Rome are not included in this list, see Roman temple. The verb abominari was a term of augury for an action that rejects or averts an unfavourable omen indicated by a signum, the noun is abominatio, from which English abomination derives. At the taking of formally solicited auspices, the observer was required to acknowledge any potentially bad sign occurring within the templum he was observing, regardless of the interpretation. He might, however, take actions in order to ignore the signa, including avoiding the sight of them. The latter tactic required promptness, wit and skill based on discipline, thus the omen had no validity apart from the observation of it. The aedes was the place of a god. It was thus a structure that housed the image, distinguished from the templum or sacred district. Aedes is one of several Latin words that can be translated as shrine or temple, for instance, the Temple of Vesta, as it is called in English, was in Latin an aedes. See also the diminutive aedicula, a small shrine, in his work On Architecture, Vitruvius always uses the word templum in the technical sense of a space defined through augury, with aedes the usual word for the building itself. The design of an aedes, he writes, should be appropriate to the characteristics of the deity. Thus in theory, though not always in practice, architectural aesthetics had a theological dimension, the word aedilis, a public official, is related by etymology, among the duties of the aediles was the overseeing of public works, including the building and maintenance of temples. The temple of Flora, for instance, was built in 241 BC by two aediles acting on Sibylline oracles, the plebeian aediles had their headquarters at the aedes of Ceres. In religious usage, ager was terrestrial space defined for the purposes of augury in relation to auspicia, there were five kinds of ager, Romanus, Gabinus, peregrinus, hosticus and incertus. The ager Romanus originally included the space outside the pomerium. According to Varro, the ager Gabinus pertained to the circumstances of the oppidum of Gabii
4.
Terra (mythology)
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In ancient Roman religion and myth, Tellus Mater or Terra Mater is a goddess of the earth. Although Tellus and Terra are hardly distinguishable during the Imperial era, the scholar Varro lists Tellus as one of the di selecti, the twenty principal gods of Rome, and one of the twelve agricultural deities. She is regularly associated with Ceres in rituals pertaining to the earth, the attributes of Tellus were the cornucopia, or bunches of flowers or fruit. Her male complement was a sky god such as Caelus or a form of Jupiter, a male counterpart Tellumo or Tellurus is mentioned, though rarely. Her Greek counterpart is Gaia, and among the Etruscans she was Cel, the word tellus, telluris is also a Latin common noun for land, territory, earth, as is terra, earth, ground. In literary uses, particularly in poetry, it may be ambiguous as to whether the goddess and this article preserves the usage of the ancient sources regarding Tellus or Terra. The two words terra and tellus are thought to derive from the formulaic phrase tersa tellus, meaning dry land, the etymology of tellus is uncertain, it is perhaps related to Sanskrit talam, plain ground. The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius distinguishes between tellus and terra in usage, Terra, he says, is properly used of the elementum, earth as one of the four classical elements with air, water, and fire. Tellus is the goddess, whose name can be substituted for her functional sphere the earth, just as the name Vulcanus is used for fire, Ceres for produce, Tellus thus refers to the guardian deity of Earth and by extension the globe itself. Tellus may be an aspect of the numen called Dea Dia by the Arval priests, Varro identifies Terra Mater with Ceres, Not without cause was the Earth called Mater and Ceres. It was believed that those who cultivated her led a pious and useful life, ovid distinguishes between Tellus as the locus of growth, and Ceres as its causa. Mater, the Latin word for mother, is used as an honorific for goddesses, including Vesta. Mother therefore expresses the respect that one would owe a mother, though Tellus, the Temple of Tellus was the most prominent landmark of the Carinae, a fashionable neighborhood on the Oppian Hill. It was near homes belonging to Pompey and to the Cicero family, the temple was the result of a votum made in 268 BC by Publius Sempronius Sophus when an earthquake struck during a battle with the Picenes. Others say it was built by the Roman people and it occupied the former site of a house belonging to Spurius Cassius, which had been torn down when he was executed in 485 BC for attempting to make himself king. The temple constructed by Sophus more than two centuries later was most likely a rebuilding of the peoples, the anniversary of its dedication was December 13. A mysterious object called the magmentarium was stored in the temple, a statue of Quintus Cicero, set up by his brother Marcus, was among those that stood on the temple grounds. Cicero claims that the proximity of his property caused some Romans to assume he had a responsibility to maintain the temple
5.
Saturnalia
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Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of deity Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December. The poet Catullus called it the best of days, the revelries of Saturnalia were supposed to reflect the conditions of the lost mythical age, not all of them desirable. The Greek equivalent was the Kronia, although probably the best-known Roman holiday, Saturnalia as a whole is not described from beginning to end in any single ancient source. Modern understanding of the festival is pieced together from several accounts dealing with various aspects, the Saturnalia was the dramatic setting of the multivolume work of that name by Macrobius, a Latin writer from late antiquity who is the major source for information about the holiday. The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, on 23 December. The statue of Saturn at his main temple normally had its feet bound in wool, the official rituals were carried out according to Greek rite. The sacrifice was officiated by a priest, whose head was uncovered, in Roman rite, priests sacrificed capite velato, the day was supposed to be a holiday from all forms of work. Schools were closed, and exercise regimens were suspended, courts were not in session, so no justice was administered, and no declaration of war could be made. After the public rituals, observances continued at home, on 18 and 19 December, which were also holidays from public business, families conducted domestic rituals. They bathed early, and those with means sacrificed a suckling pig, the phrase io Saturnalia was the characteristic shout or salutation of the festival, originally commencing after the public banquet on the single day of 17 December. The interjection io is pronounced either with two syllables or as a single syllable and it was a strongly emotive ritual exclamation or invocation, used for instance in announcing triumph or celebrating Bacchus, but also to punctuate a joke. Saturnalia is the best-known of several festivals in the Greco-Roman world characterized by role reversals, slaves were treated to a banquet of the kind usually enjoyed by their masters. Ancient sources differ on the circumstances, some suggest that master and slave dined together, while others indicate that the slaves feasted first, the practice might have varied over time, and in any case slaves would still have prepared the meal. Saturnalian license also permitted slaves to disrespect their masters without the threat of a punishment and it was a time for free speech, the Augustan poet Horace calls it December liberty. In two satires set during the Saturnalia, Horace has a slave offer sharp criticism to his master, everyone knew, however, that the leveling of the social hierarchy was temporary and had limits, no social norms were ultimately threatened, because the holiday would end. The toga, the garment of the male Roman citizen, was set aside in favor of the Greek synthesis. Romans of citizen status normally went about bare-headed, but for the Saturnalia donned the pilleus, slaves, who ordinarily were not entitled to wear the pilleus, wore it as well, so that everyone was pilleated without distinction. Female entertainers were certainly present at some otherwise all-male gatherings, role-playing was implicit in the Saturnalias status reversals, and there are hints of mask-wearing or guising
6.
Anglo-Saxons
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The Anglo-Saxons are a people who have inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their settlement and up until the Norman conquest. The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including government of shires. During this period, Christianity was re-established and there was a flowering of literature, charters and law were also established. The term Anglo-Saxon is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England, in scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English. The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity and it developed from divergent groups in association with the peoples adoption of Christianity, and was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established, the visible Anglo-Saxon culture can be seen in the material culture of buildings, dress styles, illuminated texts and grave goods. Behind the symbolic nature of these emblems, there are strong elements of tribal. The elite declared themselves as kings who developed burhs, and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms, above all, as Helena Hamerow has observed, local and extended kin groups remained. the essential unit of production throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Use of the term Anglo-Saxon assumes that the words Angles, Saxons or Anglo-Saxon have the meaning in all the sources. Assigning ethnic labels such as Anglo-Saxon is fraught with difficulties and this term began to be used only in the 8th century to distinguish the Germanic groups in Britain from those on the continent. The Old English ethnonym Angul-Seaxan comes from the Latin Angli-Saxones and became the name of the peoples Bede calls Anglorum, Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves, it is not an autonym. It is likely they identified as ængli, Seaxe or, more probably, also, the use of Anglo-Saxon disguises the extent to which people identified as Anglo-Scandinavian after the Viking age or the conquest of 1016, or as Anglo-Norman after the Norman conquest. The earliest historical references using this term are from outside Britain, referring to piratical Germanic raiders, Saxones who attacked the shores of Britain, procopius states that Britain was settled by three races, the Angiloi, Frisones, and Britons. The term Angli Saxones seems to have first been used in writing of the 8th century. The name therefore seemed to mean English Saxons, the Christian church seems to have used the word Angli, for example in the story of Pope Gregory I and his remark, Non Angli sed angeli. The terms ænglisc and Angelcynn were also used by West Saxon King Alfred to refer to the people, at other times he uses the term rex Anglorum, which presumably meant both Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Alfred the Great used Anglosaxonum Rex, the term Engla cyningc is used by Æthelred
7.
French Republican Calendar
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The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France. Sylvain Maréchal, prominent anticlerical atheist, published the first edition of his Almanach des Honnêtes-gens in 1788, on pages 14–15 appears a calendar, consisting of twelve months. The first month is Mars, ou Princeps, the last month is Février, the lengths of the months are the same, however, the 10th, 20th, and 30th are singled out of each month as the end of a décade. Individual days were assigned, instead of to the saints, to people noteworthy for mostly secular achievements. Later editions of the almanac would switch to the Republican Calendar, the days of the French Revolution and Republic saw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of the ancien régime, some of these were more successful than others. The new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures, and a new calendar. Amid nostalgia for the ancient Roman Republic, the theories of the Enlightenment were at their peak, natural constants, multiples of ten, and Latin as well as Old Greek derivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the new systems were built. The new calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politician Charles-Gilbert Romme seconded by Claude Joseph Ferry and it is because of his position as rapporteur of the commission that the creation of the republican calendar is attributed to Romme. The calendar is called the French Revolutionary Calendar because it was created during the Revolution. Indeed, there was initially a debate as to whether the calendar should celebrate the Great Revolution, which began in July 1789, or the Republic, immediately following 14 July 1789, papers and pamphlets started calling 1789 year I of Liberty and the following years II and III. It was in 1792, with the problem of dating financial transactions. Originally, the choice of epoch was either 1 January 1789 or 14 July 1789, after some hesitation the assembly decided on 2 January 1792 that all official documents would use the era of Liberty and that the year IV of Liberty started on 1 January 1792. This usage was modified on 22 September 1792 when the Republic was proclaimed, the establishment of the Republic was used as the epochal date for the calendar, therefore, the calendar commemorates the Republic, not the Revolution. In France, it is known as the calendrier républicain as well as the calendrier révolutionnaire, the Revolution is usually considered to have ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire in Year VIII. The French Republic ended with the coronation of Napoleon I as Empereur des Français on 11 Frimaire, Year XIII, French coins of the period naturally used this calendar. Many show the year in Arabic numbers, although Roman numerals were used on some issues, Year 11 coins typically have a XI date to avoid confusion with the Roman II. Napoléon finally abolished the calendar with effect from 1 January 1806, however, it was used again during the brief Paris Commune, 6–23 May 1871. These documents have kept their original dates for legal accuracy and citation purposes, years appear in writing as Roman numerals, with epoch 22 September 1792, the beginning of the Republican Era
8.
Sol Invictus
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Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 274 AD the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults, scholars disagree about whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new. The god was favored by emperors after Aurelian and appeared on their coins until Constantine I, the last inscription referring to Sol Invictus dates to AD387, and there were enough devotees in the 5th century that Augustine found it necessary to preach against them. Different explanations for the date similarity are considered to be academically thoroughly viable hypotheses by some, Invictus was an epithet for several deities of classical Roman religion, including the supreme deity Jupiter, the war god Mars, Hercules, Apollo, and Silvanus. It had been in use from the 3rd century BC, the Roman cult to Sol is continuous from the earliest history of the city until the institution of Christianity as the exclusive state religion. Scholars have sometimes regarded the traditional Sol and Sol Invictus as two separate deities, but the rejection of this view by S. E. Hijmans has found supporters. An inscription of AD102 records a restoration of a portico of Sol in what is now the Trastevere area of Rome by a certain Gaius Iulius Anicetus, another, stylistically dated to the 2nd century, is inscribed on a Roman phalera, inventori lucis soli invicto augusto. Augustus is a regular epithet linking deities to the Imperial cult, Sol Invictus played a prominent role in the Mithraic mysteries, and was equated with Mithras himself. The relation of the Mithraic Sol Invictus to the cult of the deity with the same name is unclear. According to the Historia Augusta, Elagabalus, the teenaged Severan heir, adopted the name of his deity, once installed as emperor, he neglected Romes traditional State deities and promoted his own as Romes most powerful deity. This ended with his murder in 222, the Historia Augusta refers to the deity Elagabalus as also called Jupiter and Sol. While this has seen as an attempt to import the Syrian sun god to Rome. The Roman gens Aurelia was associated with the cult of Sol, after his victories in the East, the Emperor Aurelian thoroughly reformed the Roman cult of Sol, elevating the sun-god to one of the premier divinities of the Empire. Every pontifex of Sol was a member of the senatorial elite, Aurelian also built a new temple for Sol, which was dedicated on December 25,274, and brought the total number of temples for the god in Rome to four. He also instituted games in honor of the sun god, held four years from a. d.274 onwards. The identity of Aurelians Sol Invictus has long been a subject of scholarly debate, based on the Augustan History, some scholars have argued that it was based on Sol Elagablus of Emesa. Professor Gary Forsythe discusses these arguments and adds a more recent one based on the work of Steven Hijmans. Hijmans argues that Aurelians solar deity was simply the traditional Greco-Roman Sol Invictus, statuettes of Sol Invictus, carried by the standard-bearers, appear in three places in reliefs on the Arch of Constantine
9.
Septimontium
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The Septimontium was celebrated in September, or, according to later calendars, on 11 December. It was not a festival in the sense of feriae populi, according to Varro. The etymology from septem has been doubted, the festival may instead take its name from saept-, divided, in the sense of partitioned off, the montes include two divisions of the Palatine Hill and three of the Esquiline Hill, among the traditional seven hills of Rome. Plutarchs notice of this festival is obscure, and confuses the nature of the Septimontium as represented by inscriptions, at this time, he notes, Romans refrained from operating horse-drawn vehicles
10.
Yule
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Yule or Yuletide is a festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and it later underwent Christianised reformulation resulting in the term Christmastide. Terms with an equivalent to Yule are used in the Nordic countries for Christmas with its religious rites. Today Yule is also used to an extent in the English-speaking world as a synonym for Christmas. Present day Christmas customs such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, today the event is celebrated in Heathenry and some other forms of Modern Paganism. Both words are thought to be derived from Common Germanic *jeχʷla-, and are cognate with Gothic jiuleis, Old Norse, Icelandic, and Faroese jól, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian jul, jol and ýlir. The etymological pedigree of the word, however, remains uncertain, though numerous attempts have been made to find Indo-European cognates outside the Germanic group. The noun Yuletide is first attested from around 1475, the word is attested in an explicitly pre-Christian context primarily in Old Norse. Among many others, the long-bearded god Odin bears the names jólfaðr, in plural may refer to the Norse gods in general. In Old Norse poetry, the word is employed as a synonym for feast. Jolly may share the etymology, but was borrowed from Old French jolif. The word was first mentioned by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar in his Estoire des Engleis, or History of the English People, Yule was an indigenous midwinter festival celebrated by the Germanic peoples. While the Old Norse month name ýlir is similarly attested, the Old Norse corpus also contains references to an event by the Old Norse form of the name. In chapter 55 of the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, different names for the gods are given, one of the names provided is Yule-beings. A work by the skald Eyvindr Skáldaspillir that uses the term is then quoted, in addition, one of the numerous names of Odin is Jólnir, referring to the event. The Saga of Hákon the Good credits King Haakon I of Norway with the Christianisation of Norway as well as rescheduling the date of Yule to coincide with Christian celebrations held at the time, Yule had previously been celebrated for three nights from midwinter night, according to the saga. Haakon planned that when he had established himself and held power over the whole country. According to the saga, the result was that his popularity caused many to allow themselves to be baptised, Haakon spent most of this time in Trondheim
