· Years, Months, and Days I
· Years, Months, and Days I
Eras and Anniversaries
This chapter considers distinctively Roman modalities for shaping time—their cult of the anniversary, their internal dating systems, and their molding of the temporal patterns of the year, especially in the form of that great Roman monument, the Julian calendar. It begins with eras, which mark off watersheds from which time may be counted, and with anniversaries, which link points in time. Often, anniversaries make their connections between points in time through symbolic totals of years, but what most Roman anniversaries connect are significant days, so that the article considers the beguiling intricacies of the mechanisms of the Roman calendar, in order to understand what is at stake in the recurrence of days. The use of Troy in anniversary contexts has been the subject of a study by David Asheri that collects much fascinating evidence for the role of Troy in the construction of symbolically significant anniversaries, especially millenarian anniversaries.
Keywords: Roman, anniversary, dating systems, calendar, eras, time, Troy, David Asheri
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