The length of a life

Many of the inscriptions in the catacombs and cemetaries of the first Christians in Rome relate the exact number of years, months, and days which a person lived, and many of them also specifiy the day on which they died, but none mention the person's birthday.  Clearly they knew they knew the 'real' birthday, but they simply do not mention it.  However, the inscriptions do frequently speak of the day on which they died as the day on which they were "born in peace", or something similar.

Severius

SEVERIO FILIO DVL

CISSIMO LAURENTIVS PATER

BENEMERENTI QVI BI

XIT ANN. IIII ME VIII DIES V

ACCERSITVS AB ANGELIS VII IDVS IANVA.

Severio Filio Dulcissimo

Laurentius Pater

Benemerenti qui vixit

Annos IIII Menses VIII Dies V

Accersitus ab angelis VII Idus Ianua.

For Severius, most sweet

and well deserving son, from

your father Laurentius.

You lived four years, eight months, 5 days.

Summoned by angels on the seventh of the Ides of January

(p. 156)

A Consular Anecdote

In 59 BC Julius Caesar and Marcus Bibulus were elected consuls.  Caesar tried to bring forward legislation that would redistribute lands to the poor, and when the opponents of the measure objected, Pompey (who was part of the informal Triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus which actually made the decisions) filled the streets of Rome with his soldiers.  Bibulus tried to block the measure, but he was physcially assaulted and withdrew to his house for the rest of the year, proclaiming the legislation void because of bad omens.  Wags referred to the year as that of "the consulship of Julius and Caesar".

Consuls and Years

How did the Romans keep track of years?   Formally, they dated events ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city, which was traditionally 753 BC.  But in practical terms, people generally referred to the year by the two consuls for that year: "during the consulship of Scipio and Crassus", for example.  Roman magistrates were elected to one year terms, and although it was not unheard of for a man to be elected to the same post, it very seldom happened, so it was easy for people to refer to the year by the names of the consuls.  The closest modern analogy is probably when we refer to something that happened "during the Reagan administration", or on a personal level, "that was the year we got married". 

Consuls were the chief executives of the Roman Republic.  There were two of them because the Romans hated autocrats, and did not want absolute power in the hands of one man: history proved that they were right to do so. Many postitions in the Roman state (governors of provinces or commanders of armies, for example) were only filled by ex-consuls (or ex-praetors, who were one step below the consuls in the hierarchy of Roman magistrates).   Even during the Empire the consulships were still filled annually, because the bureaucracy of the Roman state required officials to run it.

This particular inscription can be dated to the year 291 AD because we have lists of all the consuls for each year of the Republic and the Empire from 509 BC up until the middle of the 6th century AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Consuls

Cervonia Silvana

EX VIRGINIO TVO BEN

E MECO VIXISTI LIBENI C

ONIVGA INNOCENTISSI

MA CERVONIA SILVANA

REFRIGERA CVM SPIRITA

SANCTA DEP KAL APR. TIBERI

ANO II ET DIONI COSS.

Ex virginio tuo bene

mecum vixisti libeni

coniuga innocentissima

Cervonia Silvana

refrigera cum Spirita

Sancta dep Kal Apr.

Tiberiano II et Dioni Coss.

From your girlhood you

lived a good life willingly with me, my most innocent

wife Cervonia Silvana!

May you find refreshment with the Holy

Spirit!  Buried on the Kalends of April

in the Consulship of Tiberianus (his second)

and Dio.

(p. 259)

Roman months

I hinted yesterday about the names of the months and their relation to their place in the calendar.  The Roman calendar originally began with the month of March, so the months of September, October, November, and December all betray their origin in their name (Septem=Seven, Octo=Eight, Novem=Nine, and Decem=Ten).  Also, before the Empire, the names for July and August were Quintilis (Quinque=Five) and Sextilis (Sex=Six).  They were renamed for the first two Roman emperors, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.

Another indication that the year used to begin in March is that the month for adding extra days to keep the calendar in line with the sun, and which to this day we use to add a day for leap year, is the month at the 'end' of the calendar: February. (The Romans, prior to Julius Caesar's reform of the calendar, used to add a month at a time in the middle of February to keep the clanedar and the sun in synch).

The Roman Calendar

The 'Mercurius' inscription refers to the Ides of February. Most of us have heard of the Ides of March from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", when the seer tells Caesar to beware the Ides of March.  But what were the Ides? and how did the Romans tell what day it was?

First off, we inherited our months from the the Romans, so the names of the months are the same as theirs, even down to the clue that the first month of the year was not January (Septem, Octo, Novem, Decem). The Romans did not use weeks, however, but referred to three days in each month by name:  the Ides, the Nones, and the Kalends.  The Kalends (from which we get 'calendar') was the first day of the month; the Nones was the 7th, and the Ides the 13th.  Ah ha!, you say, but the Ides of March is March 15th!  That's true; for March, May, July, and October, the Nones fell on the 9th and the Ides on the 15th.  These three days were used for market days, interest calculations, and legal proceedings.

The strangest thing about the Roman calendar to modern eyes, though, is how they counted the days.  We count forward from the first day of the month; e.g., the 2nd of December, the 25th of May, etc.  The Romans counted forward to the next named day of the calendar. So , for example, since May 10th is six days before May 15th (counting both the beginning and ending date, which they did), them May 10th was known as the 6th day before the Ides of May.  Today, November 16 in modern reckoning, is the 16th day before the Kalends of December.

This calendar had developed in the very first days under the Etruscans, when Rome was still a country village, and so the reason for counting like this was that, as an agrarian society, they had no need to know how many days had passed since the last market day;  they did, however, have a vital interest in knowing when they had to get their produce to the forum for the next market day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar

Mercurius

PARENTES FILIO MERCVRIO

FECERVNT QVI VIXIT ANN.

V. ET MESES VIII. NATVS IN

PACE IDVS FEBRV.

Parentes filio Mercurio

fecerunt qui vixit ann.

V et menses VIII. Natus in

pace Idus Febru.

The parents made this (monument) for

their son Mercurius, who lived for

5 years and 8 months.  He was born into

peace on the Ides of February. (Feb. 13)

(p. 250)

Ichthys

In my previous post, I typed the final word of the inscription as "IXQYS".  This represents the Greek word for "fish", which is transliterated as "ichthys", and was used by early Christians as a code word (and symbol) to identify each other.

Because the blogging software does not allow me to use characters of the Greek alphabet, I substituted the letter Q for the Greek letter Theta, which looks somewhat similar.  (BTW, if anyone knows how I might get around this restriction, please let me know).

Here is a scanned document which shows the Greek text of the word, and what each letter represents:

So the inscription for Caecilia Placida could have been a regular funerary inscription, except for the inclusion of the final word.

Caecilia Placida

CECILIUS.MARITVS.CECILIAE

PLACIDAE.COIVGI.OPTIMAE

MEMORIAE.CVM.QVA.VIXI.ANNIS.X.

BENE.SENE.ULLA.QVERELLA. IXQYS.

Caecilius maritus Caeciliae

Placidae coniugi optimae

memoriae cum qua vixi annis X

bene sine ulla querella.  IXQYS

Caecilius, husband, to the memory

of his best wife, Caecilia Placida,

with whom I lived well for 10 years

without any complaint.  ICHTYS

(p. 343)

Spelling and language change

The previous entry, although very short, is rich with examples of how spelling can show us pronunciation from a vantage of almost 2000 years.

Agape:  This is the Latin transliteration of a Greek word which means 'love'.  This is probably a name, although it could also be an affectionate term of endearment.  The spelling shows us that the Greek letter Eta was pronounced like the Latin letter 'e'.

vibes:  in 'correct' Latin, this would be 'vives', the second person singular of the future indicative ("you will live").  The alternation of 'v' and 'b' here shows that, even in the first two centuries AD, the trend of pronouncing these letters as they are in Spanish today was already current.  We will see many more examples of this, and explore it further.

eternum:  usually spelled 'aeternum', this shows us another trend.  Historically, the 'ae' diphthong was originally spelled 'ai' and was pronounced as the English word 'eye'.  One of our oldest existing records of written Latin is a bronze tablet from the year 186 BC, which records a decree of the Roman Senate concerning the 'Bacchanalia'  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_de_Bacchanalibus ).  This decree changes from 'ai' to 'ae' in the same phrase ('apud aedem Bellonai').   Later, the pronunciation of 'ae' softened from 'eye' to English 'ay' as in 'hooray'.  Since this was roughly the same as the pronunciation of the Latin long 'e', we see that, as in this inscription, the spelling reflected that 'confusion'.

Agape

AGAPE, VIBES IN ETERNUM

Agape, you will live forever

(p. 280)