Fasti

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FASTI

FASTI (from fasti dies, "the divinely authorized days") were the calendars of the ancient Romans. They are the only known form of a graphical representation of all days of the year from the ancient Mediterranean world. By usually displaying twelve columns of the days of the single months, the fasti offered the standard pattern for Christian calendars from late antiquity and ultimately for all representations of the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The listing of the days was organized by the recurring letters A to H (for a continuous week of eight days) at the beginning of every entry. The main information concerned the juridical character of the day, especially indicating whether it was fas (right) to open processes in front of the Roman praetor or not (nefas ). The terminologically divine sanction had other consequences, too: The comitia, the Roman legislative body of the people, could not meet on dies nefasti ; and, probably at the beginning of the third century bce, a special class of dies comitiales that could not be used for the opening of legal cases but could be used for the holding of assemblies was established.

The distribution of days in the known late republican calendars was obviously the outcome of different political and juridical practices; at least from the second century bce onwards the regulation as a whole was attributed to the codifications of the mid-fifth century (Twelve tables). Religious traditions, too, were integrated: feriae, a special class of days given to the gods as property (and hence free from every mundane activity) were marked in a particular way; that is, as dies nefasti whose violation made piacular sacrifices necessary (marked by the letters NP and abbreviations of the festival names). Obviously, the featuring of this type of religious information helped to enhance the legitimacy of the rigid systematization of temporal rules when published from within the college of the pontiffs (pontifices, priests), who formed an important body for the development of legal ruling and procedural guidelines during the early and middle republic. An important tradition attributed the publication to Gnaeus Flavius, probably aedile in 304 bce and scribe of the pontifical college.

Scholars of Roman religion took a particular interest in the list of the feriae as transmitted by early imperial fasti, and they postulated a regal "calendar of Numa" as its ultimate source (Theodor Mommsen, 1817–1903). Hence, the fasti gained the status of the single most important source for early Roman history (Georg Wissowa, 1859–1931). Yet, even if the list contained some very old traditions, it is not possible to read it as a coherent archaic system. A large number of festivals for Mars and the dedications of the former festivals of the full moon, the (e)idus, point to a complex history.

The legal and political institutions regulated by the fasti gradually fell into disuse under the Empire. Two developments, however, gave them high importance as a visual medium. Within the growing interest in a systematic reconstruction of Rome's past during the third and second centuries bce, the fasti were discovered as a medium for a display of historical achievements. When shortly after 179 bce Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, assisted by the poet Ennius, dedicated a painted calendar to the temple of Hercules and the Muses, the temporal pattern of the year was used to add the dates of the dedications of other temples, usually events caused and financed by successful warfare. Days of iterated disaster, too, could be memorized, thereby rendering the year into a temporal "mnemotope." Additionally, a list of the highest Roman magistrates, including the consuls used in dating ("eponyms"), was added. This practice was frequently imitated, hence the term fasti was used for many lists of magistrates. Not infrequently, such lists could be enlarged to short chronicles by the addition of important dated events (e.g., the Fasti Ostienses ). Whereas the text of the calendar—even if displayed in middle Italian townships—is cautiously restricted to events in the city of Rome, the lists could present (or add) local magistrates and connect local history with the history of the hegemonial city of Rome.

The dictatorship of Caesar, his divinization, and the religious restoration under Augustus witnessed a second development. A new class of feriae was born: festivals celebrating imperial victories and dynastic events. Without clear assignation of a divine owner, these days were given the status of feriae and meticulously documented in the fasti. Suddenly the ordinary medium of temporal coordination, the calendar (recently reformed by C. Iulius Caesar), was an indicator of recent political developments. Within a few years, the fashion of producing calendars in the form of large (and expensive) marble inscriptions spread over Rome and the center of Italy, even reaching to Taormina (Sicily), an area practicing an alternative form of lunar time-reckoning. The earliest known (and fragmentarily transmitted) marble calendar stems from the grove of Dea Dia, the sanctuary of the priesthoods of the Arval Brethren, reorganized by Octavianus/Augustus around 30 bce and in particular dedicated to the cult and welfare of Roman emperors. Soon copies were to be found on public places or in the assembly halls of voluntary associations. Probably without larger practical usage (papyrus calendars must have been widespread), such inscriptions demonstrated loyalty to the emperor and his political as well as religious program.

The new interest in the calendar was not restricted to stonemasons. Parallel to the spread of inscribed fasti, commentaries on the fasti were written. The antiquarian interest of late republican writers like Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 bce) in the institution of the Roman year was intensified. Varro, who pursued the initial stage of a political career, entertained vast historical interest, paying particular attention to the history of language and literature. Although philosophical originality is denied to his eclecticism, even his main antiquarian work, the Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum, is controlled by an academic-skeptical outlook. Human society (as the title indicates) precedes its religious institutions, and festivals, like the notion of specific gods and their worship, arise under specific and partly reconstructable historical circumstances. These premises are reflected in Varro's etymological dealing with the calendar in his De lingua Latina 6.

It is noteworthy that the versified commentary of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 bce – 17 ce) explicitly declared the same interest that could be detected in the temporal pattern of the spread of inscriptional fasti. The emperor is shown as an inseparable part of Roman history and religion; his (extra-constitutional) power is naturalized by his integration into the cosmic scheme of the rising and setting of stars that is part of Ovid's poetic project and easily linked to the traditional calendar by the Julian reform. At the same time, the calendrical scheme offers a convenient pattern for a description of Roman ritual, of those festivals and temples that form the visible part of Roman religion. From Varro's Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum and Verrius Flaccus's lexicon on the "meaning of words" down to Macrobius's fifth-century Saturnalia dialogue, this pattern remained attractive for the historical or nostalgic description of contemporary or past religion. Ovid himself, who finally ended up in exile, stresses the contemporary commemorative and entertaining functioning of urban festivals. Augustus, to whom the first edition (in 4 ce or shortly before) was dedicated, gets his due share of attention and praise. Yet, Ovid deliberately stops his poem by the end of June—that is, before dealing with the dynastically named and festival-laden months of Iulius and Augustus. It is rather in the epic Metamorphoses (fifteen books), published a few years later, that Ovid gives a teleological account of universal and Roman history leading down to Caesar's divinization.

Even if the fashion of epigraphic fasti was restricted to the early Principate, the graphical form of the fasti remained attractive for wall paintings, as well as for luxury book calendars. The Chronograph of 354 ce forms an ensemble of lists and chronicles around the kernel of contemporary fasti, still featuring the pagan festivals and dynastic anniversaries of the mid-fourth century. At the same time, processes that de facto and de jure replaced traditional holidays by attributing the characteristics of feriae to Christian festivals continued and renewed the fasti. The Jewish-Christian week of seven days, already marked in a calendar of Augustan times as the astrological week of the seven planets, replaced the Roman nundinal week of eight days by the second half of the fourth century. Even if it was difficult to graphically insert the complex determination of the festival of Easter into a calendar intended to be in use for a couple of years, the "birthdays" (dies natales ) of martyrs and other saints, commemorated on the fixed days of the Julian calendar by the Western church, could easily slip into the graphical (and mental) pattern of the Roman calendar.

Bibliography

Barchiesi, Alessandro. Il poeta e il principe: Ovidio e il discorso Augusteo. Rome, 1994. Translated as The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustine Discourse (Berkeley, 1997).

Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 13, fasc. 2. Rome, 1963.

Feeney, Denis. Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs. Cambridge, U.K., 1998.

Frazer, James George, ed. and trans. Publii Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum libri sex: The Fasti of Ovid. 5 vols. London, 1929.

Lehmann, Yves. Varron théologien et philosophe romain. Brussels, 1997.

Michels, Agnes. The Calendar of the Roman Republic. Princeton, 1967.

Pfaff-Reydellet. Maud. Le princeps dans les Fastes d'Ovide. Stuttgart, Germany, 2004.

Porte, Danielle. L'Étiologie religieuse dans les Fastes d'Ovide. Paris, 1985.

Radke, Gerhard. Fasti Romani: Betrachtungen zur Frühgeschichte des römischen Kalenders. Münster, Germany, 1990.