ALEXANDER MEYER: So
I am Alexander Meyer.
I'm here thanks to Kate
Clugston, who invited me.
She's wonderful.
And I'm very glad to be here.
This is actually my second
trip to the New York Google
offices, which is very exciting.
It feels slightly familiar now.
But I am from the University
of Western Ontario, AKA Western
University, depending
on who you ask.
There's a whole
marketing kerfuffle
that we could talk
about at some point.
And of course, here I'm at
Google, and it is May 6, 2015.
And we will come to talk
much more about the fact--
can we call it a
fact-- that it is
May 6, 2015 in just a minute as
we talk about time and culture
in ancient Greece and Rome.
And just a little bit
about me because this stuff
becomes relevant as I talk about
what I'm going to talk about.
I am an ancient historian,
specifically a Roman historian.
And my specialty
is Latin epigraphy.
So I spend most of my time
going through old books which
have then lists of inscriptions
from the Roman world.
Most of these are in Latin.
Some of them that I
read are also in Greek.
And we'll talk about a couple
Greek inscriptions today.
And they are on all
sorts of material,
from-- largely on stone,
also on bronze, on wood,
and on little pieces of copper,
all sorts of stuff that we
can find.
And I'm basically
interested in anything that
has writing on it more or less.
And I use this type of
evidence specifically
to think about issues of
identity in the ancient world.
I'm particularly
interested in the ways
that different cultural groups,
however we define them--
whether we think about
terms like ethnicity
or geography or anything
else that you can think
of that might divide groups.
Race is something that I
think a fair amount about.
I'm interested in these
things and how they're
expressed in the
ancient world and how
that might affect our
understanding of them
in the modern world as well.
And we'll return to the
modern world momentarily
now and then at the end as well.
And I'm interested in a
few other issues as well.
One of these is travel,
and that's of course a way
that different groups around the
Roman world and the Greek world
and the ancient world in general
interacted with each other.
And I'm also interested
in maps and geography,
so the way that people
perceived the world.
And this got me interested
long ago in perceptions of time
as well and the ways in which
we can see in the ancient world
people's perception of time.
And some of this comes through
with calendars specifically,
which is the stuff I'm going
to talk to you about today.
And we can see by
looking at calendars
from the ancient world,
strangely enough,
a lot of the ways that people
interact with each other.
And we can actually
even start doing this
by thinking about
the modern world
as well, as we think about
the calendar and the fact--
we shall call it, though this
is very subjective-- that it is
May 6, 2015 and the other ways
that we can think about that
in the modern world and think
about how these things interact
with each other and then
how the same sort of thing
happened in the ancient world.
And we can see
calendars and clocks--
and we could talk a bit about
clocks as well-- as signs
of identity formation
and interaction as well.
And I'd like to show you
about five examples of how
this was possible in the
ancient world throughout today.
Now the first thing
to do though is
to think about this
idea of the date.
So, as I keep saying, "the
fact" that it is May 6, 2015.
There are all
sorts of other ways
that we could
express today's date.
You can see on this
slide, of course.
If we go back to the old
Roman way of expressing dates,
we would call this the
day before Nones of May
in the year 2768.
That is of course the
year from the founding
of the city of Rome,
the legendary founding
of the city of Rome
anyway in 753 BC.
We should talk about what
BC actually means as well.
But we call it May 6, 2015
by the Gregorian calendar.
And the Gregorian calendar
is an interesting one.
It was invented--
not really invented--
instituted by Pope Gregory
XIII in October of 1582.
So if you think about the grand
scheme of time, of course,
this is not even a blink.
Only in the last
few centuries really
have we reckoned
this bit of time.
But it's an interesting way
to think about the world.
It's of course a modification
of the older Roman calendar.
We'll talk about the
formation of that
under Julius Caesar
and the modification
under Augustus before Gregory.
But its adoption is an
interesting story as well.
So it was instituted
by Gregory in 1582.
It was then adopted in Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and Poland
also in 1582.
You can see within of
course a correlation still,
a modern correlation
between this relationship
between the Catholic
Church and nation states.
So these Catholic
countries are then
adopting this
calendrical system that
was introduced by the
pope in the 16th century.
However, not everybody did this.
For example, the United Kingdom.
The UK didn't actually
adopt the Gregorian calendar
until 1752, so a couple
hundred years later just about.
The Ottoman Empire didn't
assume it until 1917.
So getting even further
along than that.
Russia adopted the
Gregorian calendar in 1918.
And then the Soviet
Union adopted it in 1922.
So we're getting very much
into the modern world here.
And Greece didn't actually
adopt the Gregorian calendar
until 1923.
So and you could
think about that
as a different interaction.
We see some of those
others-- well, the first,
of course, the UK,
it's the interaction
between the Protestant Church
or churches and the Catholic
Church and then in Eastern
Orthodox and Russian Orthodox
churches as well.
And all of these
things then leading
to some sort of agreement.
But then we can also look
further afield as well.
China didn't adopt the Gregorian
calendar until 1912 or 1929.
It was sort of a piecemeal
process in China.
And India, Libya, and Persia--
that is, Iran-- of course
still use different
calendars today,
for certain purposes anyway.
As I mentioned before,
the Gregorian calendar
is a modification of the
earlier Roman calendar,
what we'll refer to for
argument's sake as the Julian
calendar.
And this is a solar
calendar that was
implemented by Julius Caesar.
He set it up in 46, and
the calendar actually
started to be used in 45 BC.
And it replaced an
earlier lunar calendar
to which I'll return
in a few minutes
and then again was modified
by Augustus in 9 BC.
The year numbering system
that we use at various times
is also an interesting
thing to think about.
So to think about that
we use-- so that's 2015.
The Romans, where
today it's 2768.
The numbering system
that we use is basically
attributed to Dionysius Exiguus.
And it replaced a previous
system of calendrical
dating, going back--
well, actually this
is a system that we no
longer particularly use.
But Dionysius-- yes, Dionysius
replaced a calendrical system
which had been based on what's
called the Diocletianic era,
meaning that this had picked up
at the accession of the Roman
Emperor Diocletian in 284 CE.
And Dionysius established
this system then in 525,
so about a century later.
And that gets us to
our sort of AD-- well,
it gets us moving anyway
toward our AD, BC dates.
If we think about this
question of AD and BC,
it's an interesting
thing as well.
And I think as my
lecture goes on,
you'll see that I mostly use
CE and BCE as we go through.
And this is a replacement
then of course of anno Domini
and before Christ
with a less sectarian
version of this, which
is the common era
and before the common era.
And you can see within that
expression of time also
a very cultural and
political element to this.
So something of course,
the Western calendar,
the calendar that we use,
the Gregorian calendar
having a lot to do with
the Christian church.
But then as we get into the sort
of more modern, hopefully more
secular world, a modification
of this to be more inclusive
and not to pin the
calendar to any one faith.
Now this is an interesting thing
also though because of course
if you just go
sort of half a step
away from what we
actually call the date,
this is still sort
of a religious thing.
We didn't change the numbers.
We just changed the labels.
And that may give you an
idea of how dedicated perhaps
our culture is to incorporating
these different other cultures
other than the
Judeo-Christian tradition.
And that I'll leave you to
think about in your spare time.
Write a letter to
the "New York Times."
I'm sure they'd love to have it.
Right.
But this is only-- and
the modification then
or the adjustment of
AD to CE is only part
of a much larger
debate that's going on
and continues to sort of rage
through the world of calendars
anyway.
We talked about the
Gregorian date here.
We could also talk about
the old Julian date.
I think I've got that here.
By the Julian calendars,
we're actually
nine days before the Kalends
of May in the year 2768
from the founding of the
city, ab urbe condita.
This is an interesting thing.
You can see actually
these dates don't match.
They're 13 days separated.
And this has to do with errors
in the calendar going back
to Augustus when he reformed
the previous errors of Julius
Caesar.
And it has to do with
a fact which may only
come to mean anything to you if
you actually live to the year
2100, which is that the
year 2100 will actually not
be a leap year.
So 2000 was, but 2100 won't be.
And this has to do with
the length of course
of the solar year.
And this is
something that wasn't
realized until
relatively recently
and then had to be corrected.
Right.
So the Romans had a
slightly different calendar.
Then it was corrected of
course by Pope Gregory.
We could of course also go
by the Hebrew calendar, which
gives us a different day, the
18th day of Iyyar in the year
5775.
The Hebrew calendar is a
very interesting thing.
It's of course incredibly useful
if you do crossword puzzles.
It comes up all the time.
The months worth
memorizing though,
especially if you're
competitive about these things.
And I only am because
the "New York Times,"
the thing on my iPad
tells me how long
it took me to do a
crossword puzzle.
And then it says what
the average length was.
And I'm just-- my
personality doesn't
allow me to be sub-average.
So I have to do that.
It's a pretty great system.
It's a good calendar.
It's a 19 year lunar
solar calendar.
So it corrects itself every
19 years as the seasons shift,
and the months will change of
course in their relationships
to the season, which is
sort of a difficult thing
and not ideal for many purposes.
But of course it has
persisted for a long time.
And systems like
this have certainly
been used since the
5th century, BC.
The year dates,
interestingly enough,
for the Hebrew calendar are
based supposedly on time
of creation and were
not calculated actually
until the 2nd century, CE.
Think about how far
back these things go.
So a difficult thing
to do, figure out
exactly when this was.
And even when we hear about the
calculations of when creation
was, of course, it is calculated
in respect to the Seleucid
Dynasty, so into this eastern
dynasty, when they were,
and then going back to
the beginning of the world
theoretically.
We could use other
calendars here as well.
The Persian calendar.
By the Persian calendar, this is
the seventh day of Ordibehesht
in the year 1392.
Very different calendar.
This calendar is still
used in Iran today.
It was adopted in the year 1925,
so not a very old calendar.
It begins on march,
which is the time
of the vernal
equinox, which makes
a certain amount of sense.
It just depends when you want
to start your year of course.
And interestingly, it has been
modified since 1925 as well.
And from the years 1976 to 1979,
the start date of the calendar
was moved from the
Hijra of Muhammad
to the accession
of Cyrus the Great.
So the system by which
they numbered years.
And then of course this
was undone with the fall
of the Shah in 1979.
So you can see the politics
of the calendar sort of very
overtly expressed in that.
And this of course persists
as an official calendar,
so something that has to be
calculated and reconciled then
with the Gregorian
calendar as well.
Other countries of course
have their own as well.
So the Indian civil calendar
is continuing on, also
a politically fraught
issue, by which
this is the 17th of
Vaisakha in the year 1937.
The numbers are just close
enough that you can actually
get confused between
the Gregorian calendar
and the Indian civil calendar.
The start date of this, as
we're counting years-- it
starts with the Saka era.
And actually, it began
then-- the numbering--
with the equinox
on March 22, 79 CE.
Only an interesting
to me-- well,
for this reason, of course, but
also because that is the year
the Mount Vesuvius erupted.
So cool.
It gets into the
Roman world anyway.
I wonder if there's some cool
connection between these two.
I don't think so.
It's just coincidence.
But I would like to think so.
There is a subject for
your historical novel.
So I like to-- just
planting seeds here.
Just put me in the footnotes.
I'll be happy.
The Indian civil calendar then
was adopted on March 22, 1957.
For those of you who know
your 20th century history,
this is sort of an
interesting thing.
It's about 10 years
after the emancipation
or the independence of India.
And you can see this
as an expression then
of the difference, the
independence of modern India
from the United Kingdom.
And Prime Minister Nehru
once wrote, "They"-- that is,
different calendars-- "represent
past political divisions
in the country.
Now that we have
attained independence,
it is obviously
desirable that there
should be a certain
uniformity in the calendar
for our civic, social,
and other purposes.
And this should be done
on a scientific approach
to this problem."
An interesting thing,
that recognition
of course of the politics here.
We can read that onto the
Indian-British debate.
But actually, I
believe at this point
he was speaking about
the fact that there
were some ridiculous
number-- I want
to say it was well
over dozens, hundreds--
of different
calendars being used
in different parts of India.
So a very confusing thing.
He's trying to find some unity
for a new country, independent
of its previous
overlord, shall we say,
its previous dominating force.
My favorite of the now defunct
calendars that goes around
is the French
Republican calendar.
I think it's
absolutely fascinating,
and it's brilliantly political.
So this is perhaps
the most political
of the calendars
that we can look at,
at least the most
overtly political.
This would be--
here's the date here.
So Floreal 17th in the year 223.
This calendar was implemented
by a decree of the Convention
Nationale on October 5,
1793 and implemented then
on November 24, 1794.
So this is just in the
wake of the revolution.
And in a world then
where of course we
see the Gregorian calendar, the
power of the Catholic church
expressed through the French
monarchy, is then overthrown.
And with it, the
calendrical system
is changed in order
that it will represent
a more rational and of
course more egalitarian world
in many ways.
So they created 12 months
then of equal length,
of 30 days each, and
then a six day holiday
period at the end of the year
when nobody would do anything,
and it was France.
An absolutely brilliant system.
I like it a lot.
It was abolished though not
long afterwards in 1806,
then reinstituted briefly during
the Paris Commune uprising
of 1871 but is now gone.
But it is an
interesting attempt.
And you can also
see this as trying
to rationalize the world in
making equal length months,
going back toward the invention
of the metric system of course
and the implementation
of the metric system.
Same kind of ideal
of making the world
make sense in a way that--
wouldn't it be nice if it did?
But it does not.
Until a couple years ago,
whenever I talked about this,
I liked to talk about the
Mayan Long Count calendar.
But we can throw that one out
because it didn't do its thing.
The world didn't end.
And the dates have gotten
much less interesting
and much shorter now.
We would call it 130277, which
used to be a big long number,
and it was much more fun.
But you can certainly think--
that's a calendar then
in the New World of giving
us an idea of the ways
that these cultures interacted.
Now for you guys, perhaps
more scientifically grounded,
you could think
about different ways
and different scientific
ways by which we record time.
So the ISO 8601 date,
day three, week 19, 2015.
That sounds nice
and rational, right,
in a way that we don't
have to translate it really
from language to language.
The Julian day is an
interesting system
by which we can keep time.
I think I've
actually gotten this.
Do I have this?
Here's the Julian day.
This is day-- god, that's
a big number-- 2,457,149.
It becomes unwieldy
really quickly.
We can abbreviate this.
There's a modified version
by which it's 57,148.7 local.
These are dates then
calculating the number of days
since January 1, 4713 BC.
Again, that BC creeps in.
For some reason, we
have to use that.
And this is a point
at which a whole bunch
of different calendrical
systems actually coincide.
So it makes sense when
translating from one calendar
to another to use this date.
And it's basically for
astronomical reasons,
and we can talk
a lot about this.
Interestingly about
this thing as well-- it
sounds like a very modern idea.
Of course, somebody had to
have a graphing calculator
to make this whole thing work.
But it was actually
first proposed in 1583.
So just about the time of the
Gregorian calendar reform.
Somebody else said,
well, actually, you know,
there would be a better, more
universal way of doing this.
And not really
widely used today,
but used for various purposes.
And then for those of you
who are more fancifully-- no,
that sounds dismissive
of me-- inclined.
Discordians among
you, if there are any,
the date of the
Discordian calendar today
is Sweetmorn Discord 53rd,
Year of Our Lady Discord 3181.
Not many people use this one.
And it's basically
an invented calendar
and very interesting for ways of
thinking about invented worlds.
However, if this
religion kicks on,
just remember I noted it
first and therefore should
receive salvation.
And this is interesting.
The start date for
this is 1166 BC.
So we still have to express
this in an AD, BC fashion.
Although I have
written here BCE.
So maybe we could sanitize that
a little bit by saying BCE.
But an interesting
phenomenon as well.
And then the personal
date by which I date
all my correspondence of
course is the Stardate.
And we have to think
about the exact system
that we're going
to use for this,
commonly in use other than
just changing the numbers
and putting points
between them, which
I think is kind of cheating.
It would get us to the day
307,656.16 local or 688,824.7
local.
Now I also spend a lot
of time thinking about
whether you would actually
have local time if you
were serving in the Starfleet.
I mean, of course, there's
also some relativity involved
and everything.
But Starfleet headquarters
is in San Francisco.
So should we be using Greenwich
Mean Time or West Coast time?
I don't know.
But another calendar
of course which
you'll find some use of at
some point in your life.
Now there are other ways
of dating things of course
that you guys may
be familiar with,
specifically dates
used digitally, used
for specific computer programs.
So Excel, for example.
Unix has its own dating system.
And these are things that
of course mean something
to some people and
not to others and are
used for various reasons.
They also have
significance though.
Any one of these dates we
could all decide to use.
And yet for some reason
in the modern world,
nobody can decide on a
single system to use.
And this is particularly
irritating to me in a way.
So I live in Canada now.
I am American by birth.
I spend a lot of time in
the UK and around Europe.
And every time I
have to fill out
one of those customs
declaration cards,
I screw it up because I put
the numbers in the wrong order.
So we can't even decide on that.
We can't decide whether to
separate the months, days,
and years with dashes
or points or slashes.
And it's just a mess.
But you will see this.
Whenever I do it, and I
send an email to a student
or something, they giggle.
And they say, oh, you
did it the American way.
So there is a lot
of identity involved
in even these small
expressions of time.
Now if we step
back a little bit,
we could think much more
abstractly about this.
And really, I'd like
to step back and talk
about ancient
calendrical systems.
And we can see the same ways
of these calendars interacting
that we can see in
the modern world.
And once you see
this, you will start
to see it all over the place.
So if we think about Greek
calendars, for example--
really, we can think about
Greek and Roman calendars.
In their very earliest days,
this continued on with-- well,
we'll see it actually
change in Greek calendars.
But they started out in
the Greek and Roman world
by using lunar calendars.
So these are calendars
that are pinned then
to the cycles of the moon.
And interestingly enough, each
city-state, basically speaking,
in the Greek world--
and this is a world then
that after the Greek
colonization period consisted
of cities everywhere
from southern France
to the Black Sea,
all over the place.
And all of these cities
had their own calendars.
They were all basically lunar.
They consisted
basically of 12 months.
The 12 months had either 29 or
30 days, which then of course
makes an imperfect year.
There are extra days
at the end that you
have to correct for things.
So you can't actually
predict on what day
the equinox or the solstice or
anything like that would occur.
And this required then a
process called intercalation,
which just means throwing stuff
in the middle of the calendar.
But it's got lots of letters,
so it makes me sound smart,
I hope.
And this was used certainly
by the 5th century, anyway.
There were 30 extra
days then added to years
three, five, and eighth
of an eight year cycle.
This eight year cycle is
called [? Octorisus ?].
It was invented-- instituted,
publicized, something
like that-- by a guy named
Cleomedes of Tenedos.
Sometime between 520 and the
430s is when he was living.
And during his
life, he did this.
And Tenedos, in case
you're interested,
is in Western Turkey, so
within that Greek world.
Now this meant that
in the Greek world,
there were innumerable--
basically innumerable calendars
that had to be
negotiated in some way.
And if you wanted to accomplish
anything on a specific date,
you had to figure out what
date it was in the city
that you were going to or
that you were in or from where
the person you're dealing with
came from, where you both came
from, depending where you are.
And it could be a total mess.
And this leads to things in
the archaeological record,
in the epigraphic
record like this,
which makes no sense
to anybody in the world
unless you read
Greek, in which case
it looks something like this.
So this is an inscription
written in Greek
obviously, as
you've already seen.
And it comes from
Delos, so an island,
one of the big
islands in the Aegean.
And I just want
to read it to you.
And we can see within the sum
of this interaction between two
calendrical systems.
So it says, "Gods.
The Amphiktyons"-- so
this is a council of four
or five people from
Athens who were then
in charge of the
temples in Delos.
And Delos at this point-- and
this inscription is from 377,
I believe, perhaps 373.
Do I have to say BCE?
I guess I do because that's
the way we're going to keep
track of these things, right?
The Athenians would actually
use Archon dates, as we'll see.
So 377 or 373 BC in Delos.
And Athens had basically
been in control
of Delos for a little over
100 years at this point.
And this is interesting, as
we read this inscription.
So, "Gods.
The Amphiktyons of Athens
enacted the following"--
and this is a decree about
finances of these temples--
"from the archonship of Kalleas
to the month of Thargelion
in the archonship of
Hippodamas in Athens,
and on Delos from the archonship
of Epigenes to the month
Thargelion in the
archonship of Hippias."
And then it goes on.
It talks about some
expenditures and things.
And then it comes
back to this issue.
And it says, "The Amphiktyons of
Athens enacted the following"--
so the second part of this--
"from the month of Skirophorion
in the archonship of Hippodamas
to the archonship of Sokratides
in Athens, and on Delos from the
month Panemos to the archonship
of Pyraithos."
And you could see within
this then two different
calendrical systems at work.
So they're saying
exactly when this
was done by the
Amphiktyons of Athens,
and it gives the dates for
both the Athenian calendar
and the Delian calendar.
So people should
understand in either place
exactly what these were.
Now within this, you
can see the workings
of the calendrical
systems as well.
These archons-- so
the head magistrates
of the city-states who are then
in charge and by whom we're
going to date years-- this
raises really interesting
questions about how people
in the ancient world
perceived the future.
That's a different paper.
But if you're going to
name every year based
on who's in charge,
and you don't
know who's going to be
in charge in the future,
how do you refer to those years?
Interesting thing.
Forthcoming book.
OK.
An interesting thing.
And we can see within this
also that Delos and Athens
have different names
for their months.
And we can go through
and look at a whole bunch
of these inscriptions.
And if you look at
a bunch of them,
eventually, you
can line them up.
And you can figure out which
month relates to which month.
And basically, you figure that
Delos and Athens had years
that started six months apart.
So they were as different
as they possibly could be.
But you can basically
match them up.
Now once you look at
a bunch of these too,
you figure, the numbers
don't actually work.
Things are slightly different.
That's because they're
intercalating their years
differently as well.
So on some years, the Athenians
would throw in an extra month
to try and correct the calendar.
And in some years, the
Delians would do it.
And those weren't
necessarily the same years.
So you have to know
then how people
were going to change their
calendar in order to predict
a date in the future.
And we don't have much
information about how exactly
they decided when to do this.
But we know in the Roman world
it was basically an arbitrary
decision a lot of times.
But if they're following
this [? Octorisus ?] cycle,
they should be able to predict
within that eight year cycle
exactly when they're
going to introduce months.
You have to do that.
So clearly, there must
have been somebody
in charge of calculating dates.
And he must have been--
or she-- very good at it.
But you can see the
complications then
of these groups working
together in order to do this.
Right.
And remember of course
that this is all
while Delos is politically
subject to Athens in many ways.
So the Athenians
probably could have
forced them to change their
calendar if they wanted to.
But they chose not to.
Or the Delian were so
attached to their own calendar
that they were determined
to keep it separate.
So you can see this
fierce independence
in the Greek world.
And we can see this in
other inscriptions as well.
So another way-- and this is a
relatively small transaction.
This is not between archons or
anything, between individuals.
Its subject matter is
slightly unfortunate.
But fortunately, hopefully
largely a thing of the past.
But this is an
interesting inscription.
So when Aristoteles son
of Aristarchos was general
of the Phokians-- so this is
a different part of the Greek
world-- in the First month--
so they're naming their months
basically just on what order
they come in-- and at Delos,
Xeneas son of Babylos--
or "Bye-blos--"
was archon in the month Heraios,
Aristeas son of Aristodamos
of Stiris sold to Pithyan Apollo
a male slave whose name is
Protos sun of Protos of Sidonian
race for the price of eight
minas of silver.
So you can see that
these complications then
of calendrical dates continue
on to personal transactions
as well.
So here you have somebody
who's selling a slave,
and he's got to give
this date and give it
in two different ways.
So it becomes very complicated
anywhere in the ancient world.
But you can see again another
place, the Phokians then,
preserving their own calendar
through this period as well.
So the same kind of thing.
And we can match these
calendars up again.
So you've got here that
Heraios was the 10th month
of the Delian calendar.
But this is then happening in
the first month of the Phokian
calendar.
So things get
extremely complicated.
And one could continue with
this with a whole bunch
of other Greek cities.
We have fortunately
thousands and thousands
of Greek inscriptions, many
of which have dates on them.
And you can go and
map them all up
and thereby give
yourself an aneurysm
and make yourself-- I
don't know-- probably fall
into a bottle of scotch.
But through all of this, you
can see within the Greek world
this fierce determination
to remain independent.
And this goes back
to the very ideas,
the fundamental ideas
of the Greek world,
which is that of the city-state,
these self-governing cities.
This was something
of course that
made the Greek city-states very
interesting, created things,
we could say, like
democracy and all this
or political experiments
of various varieties.
It made Greece a difficult
place to be, of course.
And things like wars with
people from the east,
because they didn't unite very
well, allowed in some ways
the Romans to conquer the
Greek world because again they
couldn't put together an army
to resist Roman expansion.
But this is sort of symptomatic
of this type of interaction.
You can see these
dominant forces then still
not subjugating people in
terms of their calendar.
We can see something
very different
though happening
in the Roman world.
And we can even see
interaction between
the Greek and Roman world.
So the Roman calendar,
we think about,
was theoretically set
up by King Numa, who
was the second king of Rome.
And it operated a calendar
which was separate then from any
of the Greek calendars.
Supposedly then in the
8th century, Numa--
again, the second
king of Rome-- to whom
are ascribed many of the
religious practices of Rome--
so the first king,
Romulus, was the warrior.
And he fought to create the city
and expanded it a little bit.
And then Numa came in.
He was like, everybody
just calm down.
We need some religion here.
We're going to create
a culture, and then we
can think about expanding again.
And one of the very
first things he does then
is establish a calendar.
And you can see
this in this quote.
So, "His first act"-- that is,
Numa's first act, of course--
"was to divide the year
into 12 lunar months.
And because 12 lunar months came
a few days short of the full
solar year, he inserted
intercalary months"--
so these are extra months
to correct the calendar--
"so that every 20 years, the
cycle should be completed"--
so this is clearly different
than the [? Octorisus ?] that
we saw with the Greek world--
"the days coming around again
to correspond with the position
of the sun from which they had
started."
So they're realigning
the calendar then
with the solar year.
Right.
So you see within
this, of course,
the fact that this was
done so early or at least
ascribed to such an early date.
And this is by Livy, who's
writing in the 1st century BC.
At least with the
Augustan period,
the calendar was
thought about as being
such an important
thing that it must
have been very fundamental to
the establishment of the city.
And it seems that this 12 month
calendar probably replaced
a 10 month lunar calendar.
We don't even need to talk
about 10 month lunar calendars.
They're a disaster.
Why you would do
that, I don't know.
I guess if you like the metric
system, you'd give it a shot.
But you're going to find that
there's a little over 12 lunar
cycles in a year, so it's
going to get messed up.
And we see this then,
the establishment
of the calendar--
and this becomes
important-- as this symbol
of the creation of peace.
So if something
you want is peace,
you can correct a calendar and
make order out of the world.
The system that Numa set up
is not very well understood.
But by 450 BCE,
attempts had been
made to regularize the
calendar through intercalation.
So this group called
the Second [INAUDIBLE],
the second group of
10, seems to have tried
to establish a regular system.
And we end up with a
calendar that looks something
like this, which I
think that you probably
can't see particularly
well from your seats.
But I will lead you through
it, some of the salient
features anyway.
So it's a 12 month calendar.
And then you can see
12 months across here.
And then right at the end there
one that says inter on the top.
That's the intercalary month.
So the extra that
could be added in order
to correct the calendar.
Within this calendar-- this
calendar dates from about 60
BC, so before the reforms
of Julius Caesar--
there's all sorts of
information about culture.
We could do another hour
at least about the ways
that you can see culture
reflected in a calendar.
But the salient bits that are
in there of course, something
that's very interesting-- you'll
see the two months that I have
Mark there that
say quin and sext
don't have anything to
do really with our naming
system for months.
These are the months
that would later
be known as July and August.
You can see within that,
it's a manipulation
of the calendar, people trying
to name months after themselves
or having months named
after them in this case.
The emperor Domitian also
tried to name two months
after himself.
It didn't hold though,
because nobody liked him.
But I think he was trying to
take September and October.
But this is the old
Republican calendar,
so before Julius
Caesar and Augustus.
You can see in here
also then there
are days of political
action and religious action
marked on here.
So the ones that are circled
here have an F on them.
This is fas, meaning that
they are propitious days
for public activity.
Good stuff can
happen on a fas day.
There are labels for
N, meaning nefas,
meaning this is not a good
day, when bad things happen.
September 11.
That should be a nefas day,
a day when bad things have
happened and may continue to
in Roman superstition/religion.
There are more complicated
things on here as well.
So there's the nefasti publici.
These are days when--
public holiday.
It was not a good
day for public work,
but it could be used
for other things.
So it was largely a holiday.
There are comitial days.
You can see those
in the bottom left.
These are days in
which the comitia
or the assembly of
the Roman people
met or at least could meet.
There are these
endotercisi days,
which are half days basically.
The morning was no good, but you
could do work in the afternoon.
So that's better than nothing.
I haven't had a half
day since, I think,
I was in elementary
school or something.
And then there are religious
things marked on here as well.
You see these things, QRCF.
This seems to be the day that
the religious king of Rome
would go through and
decide what could be done
and couldn't be done and what
formulas, religiously speaking.
And then-- let's see.
Oh, here we go.
I think I went one too far.
And then also marked
on here in the columns
are the days of the week.
And this is through
a nundinal system.
Nundinal means nine days.
But by Roman reckoning, nine
days are actually eight days.
So it's an eight day week.
The week is something
also very interesting.
Think about the establishment of
the seven day week, introduced
by Augustus largely, dominant
by about the 4th or 5th century.
Of course, we still use
the seven day week today.
Sort of interesting things
about the perpetuation
of these calendars.
And if we think about the seven
day work week or the five day
work week, that's an addition
to the calendar of the last 100
years or so.
So interesting things
certainly to think about.
There are more things
on here as well.
So there are festivals
of various varieties.
The Lupercal, you can see all
the way on the left there,
the Quirinalia, the celebration
of the matrice, various things.
And if we just look
at May, I think,
we can see what's in
store for us this month.
And here we get the Lemuralia,
which is an interesting thing.
It's all kind of strange.
This is the exorcism of
malevolent household spirits.
And the idea, the tradition
for this-- and please
feel free to do this at
home-- is that you're supposed
to walk around
your house barefoot
and throw beans
over your shoulders.
So if it works, do it.
It's good for it.
And I have written
here that it's
supposed to be black beans.
So don't screw up and use
red beans or pinto beans
or anything.
Make sure you get it right.
And also, interestingly
enough, we
learn about May that it's
a bad month for marriage,
despite the fact that
everybody in the Western world
gets married in May and June.
So maybe they didn't
have that one right.
And then we have
this, the Agonalia.
We don't really actually
know much about this.
It happened on the 21st.
It was probably a celebration
from Mars based on the name.
But mostly, that's
just etymology.
And then my favorite, which is
here, the Tubilustrium, which
is, as near as we can
figure, the blessing
of the sacred trumpets.
It's a big one.
Mark your calendars
for that one.
That's coming up.
But you can see
all sorts of bits
of culture wrapped up in that.
Now the Roman
Republican calendar
was very imperfect though.
And it largely had to do
with the implementation
of those intercalary months
because the implementation
of those months came from
the pontifices, which
means the priests.
One pontifex.
It means bridge maker.
A whole bunch.
There's a college of pontifices.
And they got to make decisions
about when to or not to have
an intercalary month.
So not even using that
[? Octorisus ?] process
that we talked about before.
And this then led
to a fair amount
of arbitrary work that could
be done during this calendar.
And we can see this calendar
getting way out of whack
at various times as well.
So here's an example
of this from one
of the early books of Livy.
This is talking about
the year 190 BC.
It's actually not even
an early book of Livy.
It's about early times,
but a late book of Livy.
So, "On those days,
in which the consul"--
and the consul he's speaking
of is Lucius Cornelius Scipio--
"set out for war during
the Games of Apollo,
five days before the
ides of Quintilis"--
right so that's July-- "in
a clear sky in the daytime,
the light was obscured when
the moon went under the circle
of the sun."
OK.
Moon went under
the circle the sun.
So we have here a
note of an eclipse.
We're all scientists here of
various varieties, except me.
We could figure out when
eclipses actually occurred.
So the date that this
inscription gives
is the 11th of July.
But we know that
the eclipse actually
happened on the 14th of March.
So the calendar then
in the Roman world
was four months off.
So whoever these
pontifices were had really
screwed it up at this point.
You got to wonder why exactly
they could let it get that bad.
By the year 168, it
had been corrected.
So it was only two
and a half months off.
So they're getting in
the right direction
but still not doing a very
good job of keeping this.
And we have to wonder why
it was that they didn't
do more work to get this right.
If you figure that people are
working crops and everything,
and they actually
predict these things
by astronomical phenomenon,
if you had a calendar that
could actually predict when
those things were going
to happen, you could make plans.
It's another idea about
what the future was
like for Greeks and Romans.
But part of this is that this
calendar under this system
could be manipulated.
People could use it for various
purposes, most especially
among these is if you had
somebody who was in office who
you wanted to stay
in office, you
could add an intercalary month.
And he could get
another month of office.
It made perfect
sense if you were
trying to accomplish something.
If there were somebody you
wanted to keep out of office,
you could add an
extra month, or you
wouldn't add the extra money.
Or you could add an extra
month before he went in,
and he wouldn't be able to
go in for an extra month.
If you wanted to just
keep ticking along,
you would allow it
to keep ticking on.
And we can see some
expressions of this
with a highly charged
political figure as well.
And there is no more highly
charged political figure
in the ancient world
really than Cicero.
So when Cicero was
doing his Cicero thing,
he was sent off to be the
governor of Cilicia, 51 and 50
BCE.
And we have his letters, letters
to his friends and his family
and specifically--
and most importantly,
perhaps-- to his best friend,
this guy named Atticus.
And Atticus was an
important politician.
He was equestrian, sort
of a wealthy person,
but not in the senatorial order,
probably for his own decision.
He didn't want to be.
But Cicero, when
he's off to Cilicia,
which is in southern
Turkey, to be governor,
he wants nothing more than to
get back to the city of Rome.
His letters are
actually hilarious when
he's leaving because he's
talking about how miserable he
is and how awful this is.
And he just can't
wait to get back.
And he just hopes there isn't
a battle, because he is not
a fighting man.
And he doesn't want
to have to fight.
But these letters to Atticus are
really interesting about this.
So he starts out by
saying-- and this
is-- I've got the dates
right here-- the 14th of June
in 51 BC.
"Bu remember one thing."
It's Atticus, we
could add to this.
"You are away now
when it doesn't arise
but will return in time, so
you have written back to me."
So he's saying that you've
gone out of the city of Rome,
but you're going to go back,
according to your letter.
And then he asks him, "to see
personally and through all
our friends, Hortensius
first and foremost"--
so another powerful politician--
"that my years stays as it is
and that no new
decree is passed.
Indeed, while I am about
it, I am half inclined
to ask you to resist any
intercalation as well.
But I must not put
everything on your shoulders.
The year then, hold fast
to whatever happens."
So Cicero is out of the city.
His enemies are of course
glad to get rid of him.
Anybody who doesn't
like his speeches
is glad to get rid of him.
He could talk.
But he's concerned
then, the first point,
that somebody's going
to add another year
to his term as
governor, and he's
going to have to stay in
Cilicia for more than a year.
He really doesn't want that.
But he doesn't even
want anybody then
to intercalate or to
add an extra month so
that he has to stay in
Cilicia for another month.
You can see the way that the
politicians would do this.
And it seems to be a very
real fear for Cicero.
And as he's sort
of off presumably
just writing letters
like a madman
because he doesn't really
want to be in Cilicia at all,
he writes another letter a month
and a half later on July 26, 51
BC.
And he says, "To come back
to affairs of the town."
That is, city, of course--
that is, the city of Rome.
"For mercy's sake, as
you are staying in Rome,
do pray first and foremost,
build up a powerful defensive
position to ensure that
my term remains annual"--
that I only have to be
in Cilicia for a year--
"without intercalation even."
So he's still concerned.
And now he's not
even saying, I'm not
going to ask you to do
this, because it's a pain.
Now a month later, he's
like, get me out of here.
And he wants to get
back to the city.
And he's very concerned
then that people
aren't going to let him.
Now this problem continued on.
And it basically continued
on from this point
for another four years or so.
And then Julius Caesar, at
the end of his civil wars,
went through and
reformed the calendar,
knowing that it was off, knowing
that it was being manipulated,
knowing that
these-- well, hoping
that these types of
political wranglings
that led to this sort of
thing and the disasters
of 50 years of civil war
that had preceded this,
continuing during this
period when Cicero was off
in Cilicia-- that he could
correct these-- well,
he could bring the
world back into order,
harmonize the calendar,
the sort of symbolic nature
of the calendar, and make
everything regular again.
And he did his
darndnest to do so.
And he seems to have
created the perfect system
to do this, which is essentially
the calendar that we have now.
However, somebody
misread his instructions,
and they put in a leap
year every three years
instead of every four years.
And this just has to do with
the Roman numbering system.
He said, every three years--
he said, every four years.
And they counted inclusively,
as they tend to do,
and did it every
three years instead.
And that got
everything screwed up.
So it got out of whack
a little bit again.
And then Augustus corrected
this in about 10 or 9 BCE,
implemented it probably in 8.
And he did this essentially
by getting the calendar back
on track and then making sure
that the leap years would
happen every four years,
not recognizing of course
that 100 years that
aren't divisible by 4
shouldn't actually
be leap years.
That's what Gregory fixed
for us in the 16th century.
Now this is an interesting
time for Augustus as well.
So he held just about every
important political position
that you could in Rome.
Those that he didn't
hold, he was in a position
where he could just
appoint people or nominate
them to take these positions.
Except he was not
the Pontifex Maximus,
until the death of
this guy that he
had been aligned
with long before
but had actually
exiles in 36, a guy
named Lepidus, who
then had the gall
to survive in exile for
25 years and then died
in late 13 or early 12 BC.
And then Augustus could
become Pontifex Maximus,
which then gave him
the power of course
to correct the
calendar because this
was within the authority
of the pontifices,
and bring the world into order.
And something that
he did very quickly.
And he commemorated this by
building a type of monument.
So he erected an Egyptian
obelisk, which you can see.
So here is a Google
Earth, of course,
picture of the city of Rome.
Just about up here is where
he erected this thing.
A closer picture of it.
This is the Palazzo
Montecitorio in Rome.
The Italian senate house
is the big building
that you can see there.
And the obelisk
itself is right there.
It's sort of distorted
in this picture.
Don't get distracted
by that one.
That's the column
of Marcus Aurelius.
This is about 200 meters,
I think, from where
it was originally erected.
But it gives us a good idea
of what Augustus was actually
doing.
So here you can see the obelisk.
And he was using
it then as a gnomon
for an enormous calendrical
device, we'll call it.
Within academic
circles, the debate
rages on about whether this
was a sundial of the type
that you see here
in the drawings
or whether it was just
a meridian, meaning just
the north south
line within that.
All we have preserved for
us is the north south line.
You can read a huge
amount of literature
about this, all very
fascinating, and form
your own opinion.
But we needn't do that today.
Now the significance of this
sort of is multifaceted.
So there's certainly this idea
of correcting the calendar,
bringing the world back
into order in a way
that it had never been
in the Greek world.
Although at least it was OK.
But really, it was out of
whack in the Roman world.
And Julius Caesar then tried
to bring things in order in 46.
But he was of course
assassinated in 44.
We went back to civil war.
And then Augustus, now
holding all the power
in the Roman world,
could bring things right
and properly into their own
or into an orderly fashion.
And now the manner in which
he did this is interesting.
So the solar
calendar is probably
related to the solar calendar
that had been used in Egypt,
like, forever.
And importing that Egyptian
model of the calendar into Rome
also did something to
express Augustus' power,
that he had brought Egypt
into the Roman world.
We'll see an overt expression
of that in just a minute.
And of course, within
that power of Egypt,
he could then do things
like bring obelisks
into the city of Rome.
This obelisk is
almost 22 meters tall.
It's absolutely enormous.
Again, you can go see it today.
And he set it up
just about this time
that he was correcting
the calendar.
Right.
And it has all
these things to do
with his personal power and
the power of the Roman people
and then also this
imposition of peace,
as we've seen with
Julius Caesar as well.
And here's a transcription
of the inscription
that Augustus put on the
base of this obelisk.
It says, "The Emperor Caesar
Augustus, son of the divine"--
that is, Julius Caesar,
who had been made a god--
"Pontifex Maximus"-- interesting
that he puts this here,
also a single line just
recording that one title
of his.
And this is the one that he
had just acquired and allowed
him to change the calendar.
"Hailed as conqueror 12
times, consul 11 times,
holding tribunician power
for the 14th time"--
that's the power that,
among other things,
allowed him to veto
any legislation that he
didn't like-- "with Egypt having
been brought into the power
of the Roman people,
dedicated this to the sun."
So he put up this monument
because Egypt had been
brought into the Roman world.
So this is another
expression of the power
and the antiquity
of the Roman world,
though this obelisk isn't
as old as one might suspect,
though pretty old
by our standards.
But also-- yeah,
bringing that in and then
showing the power of course
that he can import all of this
and regularize the
calendrical world.
So a very Interesting thing.
And he was not alone in
this type of expression,
as we'll see in just a minute.
We can see however
a little bit of this
and what the actual device that
August built had looked like.
So this is the actual paving.
This is probably actually
maybe Domitianic paving,
so paving from later
in the 1st century.
But very interesting, written
in Greek, so some knowledge
of the Greek world
then as well, which is
no surprise in the Roman world.
And each of these
marks then would
have marked where the
shadow of the obelisk
should have fallen on any
given day of the year,
going all the way out to
the furthest one, which
would be the winter solstice.
And then marked on the sides
are various weather things.
So the one that I've
highlighted here for you
is [SPEAKING GREEK], which
means the Etesian winds stop.
These are the northern
winds in the Aegian,
which don't actually even
make it to Rome really.
So it's sort of strange
that he would do this.
There's another one
on there though that
talks about the summer.
And then it's got signs of the
Zodiac written up the edges.
So you can track exactly
what type of year
it is based on this monument.
And here's just a
drawing if you're
more interested
in seeing what it
looks like sort of cleaned up.
Now within the Roman world
too though, the calendar
could be manipulated in
various ways as well.
And still, expressions of
individuality and conformity
were able to be given.
So here's a great inscription,
another Greek inscription.
I've just given you the
English for this one
though because otherwise
it becomes unwieldy,
which is an idea of
the interaction then
between the Greek
calendar and the Roman
calendar under Augustus.
So it says, "It has been
decreed by the Greeks in Asia"--
so this is Asia, meaning
basically Western Turkey,
most of Turkey-- "that the New
Year's first month shall be
for all cities on the ninth
day before the Kalends
of October"-- that
is, September 23--
"which is the
birthday of Augustus.
In order that each time the day
might correspond in each city,
the Greeks shall use the Greek
day along with the Roman.
They all make the first
month called Caesar,
as previously decreed"--
the Greeks like to repeat
themselves in inscriptions--
"begin with the ninth day
before the Kalends of October,
the birth of Caesar, Augustus.
Computations of the month
shall be as follows.
Caesar, 31."
And it goes out and gives the
length of each of the months.
"And for each month, the
beginning of the new month
shall be the ninth day
before the Kalends."
That is, about the 23rd.
"The intercalated
day shall always
be that of the
intercalated Kalends
of the month of Xandikos."
We can go through and calculate
exactly how this all works.
It turns out then that
Xandikos is march.
The Kalends is the 1st of March.
So putting leap day basically
right in where it should
be in the Roman calendar.
You can see this then as sort
of a type of assimilation here,
that the Greeks are
keeping their own calendar.
They're keeping the
names and everything.
They're keeping their own
start date for the year
but manipulating it in such a
way that it aligns with Rome
and of course honors Augustus.
And the introduction
to this inscription
is also extremely interesting.
It sounds like the beginning
of some Christian texts and all
the amazing things that
it says about Augustus
and how his birth was the
beginning of the world
and all of these things.
So an interesting
phenomenon and way
to manipulate the calendar
in the Greek world.
If you think about that
sort of fierce independence
that we had seen a few
centuries earlier in Greece,
you see a very
different expression
of it, a very mollified
or softened expression
of that in the Roman world.
However, at the
same time though, we
can see some displays-- and
this one particular display--
of calendrical resistance.
Now the Greeks were only
willing to go so far
to change their calendar.
But even in the 2nd century CE,
when this calendar was made--
it's called the
Coligny calendar--
we can see an entirely
different calendrical system
being used in the Roman world.
So this was recovered about
50 miles or so west of Geneva
in France.
And it is a calendar, but
it's an entirely different
calendrical system
than the Roman.
It's a Celtic calendar.
It's actually our
earliest piece of Celtic
writing that we have surviving.
And it proposes a calendrical
cycle, a five year lunar
cycle with 60 months in
it, which is 12 per year,
with days varying in
length from 30 to 29 days.
And its details are
fairly poorly understood.
But you can see in this
exactly how different it
is from a Roman system.
So there are names of
months on it, which
I've just highlighted for you.
You can see a little bit,
so Equos there and Samon.
So there are 29
day months and then
something called
[? Devertomu ?].
And you can see that.
So there it is right at
the top there, kind of just
above Samon.
There are good
days and bad days,
like the fas and nefas
days of the Roman calendar.
You can see those,
mat and anmat.
Anmatu, it actually is.
And months are divided in
half, strangely enough,
in a way that they kind
of are in the Roman system
but not as explicitly.
So the atenoux that you
see here means renewal.
And this sort of
continues on through
the Irish Celtic tradition
as well, as do things
like Samon and these festivals
that we see at various times
here as well.
Without going into great
detail of this though,
we can see that it is
an entirely different
calendrical system.
It's used over a century and
a half-- at least a century
and a half, probably closer to
two centuries-- from the time
that this part of Gaul
had been conquered
by Julius Caesar, oddly enough.
And yet this calendar
continues on.
You can see however-- well, you
can see great resistance also
in that all of the festivals
that are on this calendar
are different from those
in the Roman calendar.
There are also no notes within
this calendar of any Roman
events.
So used completely separately
from the Roman calendar.
However, it is written
in the Latin alphabet,
so some sort of assimilation.
And it is written in a very
similar form to the way
that you would find a
Roman calendar in as much
as-- if we go back
to the back here,
all this stuff--
you can see that it
is in nice neat columns.
And each of the
days in the calendar
has a little hole next to it.
It's a peg hole.
It's something that we call
a parapegma, of which there
are many from the
Greek and Roman world.
So you can see some
cultural assimilation here
in sort of using this format for
a calendar which we don't have
expressed in any different
way and yet this resistance
by using a calendar
which is entirely
different than the
Roman calendar.
And you can see persistence of
calendars in many other ways
too.
We can track some
aspects of this calendar
through the Celtic world
and the Middle Ages
for a fairly long time.
We can see of course
the persistence
of the Roman
calendar, in as much
as we basically use it today.
The Catholic Church
kind of picked it up.
Gregory modified
it a little bit.
But it's essentially
the Roman calendar,
simplified to express
the days of the month
rather than from the
Kalends, Nones, and Ides.
And yet, there are
resistances to this
that have lasted for
2000 years, parts
of the world that refuse to
use this calendar even today.
And we can think about
the ways that calendars
shape what we think about.
You could think
about, of course,
Google Calendar, the way that
that actually affects people.
I mean, ways-- the ways that
they envision what their day is
going to look like.
We give them-- now you
have infinite opportunities
to envision your month
however you like.
I use a calendar that shows
an entire month on one day
because I don't
have a lot to do.
Other people have every
15 minutes planned out
because they have more
things to do anyway.
But we can see these
things very different.
Even when making a printed
calendar or something
like Google Calendar,
there are infinite choices
that one has to make.
What holidays are chosen
to appear on a calendar,
and which aren't?
Sometimes I just see
the weirdest thing
appear on the little
calendar that I
buy from Mead every year.
And I wonder, wow, why did
they put that on this year?
Who knows?
It was important to
somebody, and now these
are things that I'm aware of.
It sort of brings them at
least into the mainstream
of my thinking.
One of the things that
I love about Google
too is that you get the--
what do you call it--
Google Doodles every
day, which are in a way
a type of calendar.
It marks something
important on every day.
Some of those are very weird
things that they put on.
Some are brilliant.
Some are-- they,
like, changed my life.
I learn something
amazing every day.
And some of them
are, this is the day
that "Star Wars" came out.
But if you think about that
as a cultural expression
in a type of calendar, it
really affects our lives
in many important ways.
And it expresses little
bits of our culture.
But then as you think
about calendars and clocks
in many ways as well,
you think about the ways
that these affect global
commerce and communication.
We saw that a
little bit thinking
about the Greek
inscriptions, that you
have different places
that use different
calendars but still
manage to conduct business
with one another.
As you think about
this, expressing time
in a much smaller term,
thinking about clocks,
think about the importance
of time keeping for GPS.
This is something-- the
only that way we can-- well,
basically the only way
I can navigate myself
any place other than in New
York, where the roads are
nice and straight, is
having some sort of system
to tell me where
things actually are.
And even within that, if you
think even further than that,
if you think about
commerce, think
about the importance
of time keeping as far
as Wall Street is concerned.
Every one of those
transactions that go through
are timed down to the
picosecond or something
these days to which
one goes through first.
So the ability to keep
time and to know time
becomes very, very important
in just about every aspect
of our lives.
It's interesting to see that
these things are equally
true in the ancient world.
So if you have any questions,
I'd be happy to answer them.
It's a big subject.
But thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Anybody have questions?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: The idea
of anniversaries.
What gave rise to those?
I assume those
weren't always around.
But what gave rise
to this belief
that, for whatever reason,
365-ish after an event happened
was somehow significant?
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah.
That's an interesting question.
I mean, certainly the
Romans celebrated birthdays.
And they would know when
somebody's birthday happened.
A lot of that, I
think, is astrological.
If you think about--
Augustus's birthday is
an interesting example
of this, recognizing
that it was when the sun
was in this position,
and the stars were
in this position,
something happened,
to commemorate that.
I mean, I think
there's something
that's innately human
about commemorating things.
I'm not sure that
we can get that,
get to exactly what that is.
But within these
calendars also, there's
nothing, especially
something like that,
which is above manipulation.
If you think about the way
that the Roman calendar was
when August was born-- what, 63
BC-- the calendar was a mess.
It was someplace between two
and a half and four months off.
So the day he was born-- how do
you count that, what day it is?
Now Augustus himself decided
that the way he was going
to count that was to say that
it happened at the autumnal
equinox on September
23, which is always
picked up in different ways.
And certainly, as you
can see, religion.
Doing something on
the same year is
supposed to propitiate the gods
in some way, that in some way
it's ordained that these things
happened at a given time.
But there's also something
extremely arbitrary about it,
especially when, I
suppose, powerful people
become involved.
I don't know.
It's difficult to say.
But yeah, there
is-- the flexibility
of dates is an
interesting thing.
Anybody else?
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: How did people
arrange to meet up
in the era before
precise time keeping?
ALEXANDER MEYER:
Like day to day?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
ALEXANDER MEYER:
Well basically, you
can use the sun as a sundial
of sorts at any given time.
There certainly were
sundials around.
There's a guy named
Richard Talbert, who's
I think still working if his
book hasn't come out, all
about portable
sundials in antiquity.
People just carried
sundials around with them.
The problem with
that is figuring out
exactly where north and south
are to get your sundial right.
But basically, that was it.
So at the archaeological
site I work at,
a place called Vindolanda
in northern England,
we have writing tablets.
And basically, when you get
a time of day mentioned,
it's like noon or dawn or dusk.
And that's about it.
Beyond that, you can use
various Bear Grylls means
of figuring out what time
it is, which is basically
to hold your hand
up to the horizon
and then put one
on top of another
until you get to an hour.
But that doesn't work very
well in England in the winter,
because the sun
never gets that high.
But basically, they're rounding
way off, very simple times
rather than very specific times.
So if you had to be
at some place at 3:05,
get there at 2:30.
That'd be my advice.
Unless you were the
more important person,
then wait till 4:00.
They'd be waiting
outside your house.
AUDIENCE: Just the
less important person
ends up waiting around for
arbitrary amounts of time?
ALEXANDER MEYER: Basically.
Yeah.
I mean, I'd say Rome was
a very hierarchical world.
And people built
into their houses
these big benches where
their clients would just come
and wait for them to turn up.
And we do this.
They do it in movies
anyway, where somebody
comes to a meeting,
and the guy's
in his office not
doing anything.
He just makes the guy
wait for a little while.
You get the same kind of
thing in antiquity, I'm sure.
Anything else?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: So since
it was so complicated
to calculate these times, do
you trust historical records
when you find them?
Like, you say, oh, they said
that this month corresponds
to that month.
Hmm, maybe I should take
that with a grain of salt.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah.
You have to be careful
about these things.
So there are anchor points
that we have in time, things
like eclipses that we can figure
out exactly when they happened.
The chronology, long length
chronology in the ancient world
is an extremely dodgy subject.
And I got interested
into it a while.
And I realized that
there would be madness.
It's going to drive me crazy
because once you start picking
at that house of
cards, it's in danger
of tumbling at any moment.
So we do have to
be very careful.
And really what you look
for in those situations
is some sort of confirmation.
And we have lists
of consuls in Rome
and various events
which we can rely
on to some point in the past.
But there are also points
at which the records in Rome
were lost.
It burned.
But we have copies of
them, but you don't know
if those are the real copies.
So you have to be really
careful in figuring out,
especially the further
back you go in time,
exactly when things happened.
But things get better.
And there's still a few debates
about this, about the Middle
Ages and whether we have
the right number of years
in what we used to think
about as the Dark Ages, now
medieval times.
And some argue that we're
a couple hundred years off.
So yeah.
And in some ways,
we can correct that
by looking at tree
rings and things
and sort of get a better idea.
But yes, you have to be
skeptical about dates for sure
and look for confirmation.
We try to find independent
literary sources
for things that aren't using
the same literary tradition
and just mimicking it.
And that can be
problematic at times.
But we do have lots
of sources, starting
in really the imperial period
in Rome that are pretty good.
That's part of the
reason that I stick
to Roman imperial history.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: You mentioned-- most
of these examples of these
actually being used seem to
be kind of political, having
to do with decrees and things.
Are there other examples of
when calendars would be applied,
like for agriculture
or astronomy.
Maybe they weren't useful,
because it was so ad hoc.
ALEXANDER MEYER:
Yeah, absolutely.
So I alluded at one
point to a parapegma,
of which would have two
or more parapegmata.
And we have several of these
from the ancient world--
several, many,
depending on how you
look at it, of these--
in various forms
from the ancient world, some
literary and some physical.
And the idea was
that you're going
to move a peg from day
to day and tell the time.
And some of these are
specifically astrological.
And so they talk about the
rising and setting of stars
throughout courses of the year.
And then some of them
are a combination
of astrological and agricultural
so that people like Columella
write and say, OK, well,
you should-- and I'm just
going to make something up.
I am not a farming man-- that
you should plant your corn
at the vernal equinox.
And it gives us a good idea then
of how these things were done.
And you can see then the
importance of calendars
as we go through history.
And this becomes particularly
important after the Julian
calendar reforms and
the Augustan calendar
reforms to a lesser extent
because you could then
count on the same thing
happening on the same day.
So if you were going
to plant something
on the autumnal equinox, you
knew that the autumnal equinox
was going to happen on or about
the 22nd or 23rd of September.
It really changes the world
in a kind of nice way.
It didn't then require people
to do astrological observations
regularly.
But rather, it becomes a
predictive calendar rather than
a sort of expressive calendar.
And we get these-- what
else would you get?
Those are the big ones,
astrology, astronomy.
And in the ancient
world, there's
a very fine line between
astrology and astronomy
and agriculture.
And then there's the
political ones, so three
or four categories.
Yeah.
Oh, you're welcome.
AUDIENCE: With all these
different calendars
in different city-states,
how did they rectify them
when it came to pan-Hellenic
festivals and games,
specifically the Olympics.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Oh,
that's a great question.
Yeah.
And there's actually a
whole field of debate about
when exactly those
happened, when in the year.
AUDIENCE: So the answer
is we don't know?
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah.
The answer would be that it
was very difficult to do.
So these dates
would be announced,
and then people would
have to calculate
the difference in
their calendar and know
exactly when to arrive.
AUDIENCE: You assume some
city-states just showed up late
because they counted wrong.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah.
And there are
things about people
being banned from the games
because they didn't get there
in time.
And yeah.
These things happened.
So they either arrive a
month early or something.
And then people didn't,
and they got in trouble.
And they weren't
allowed to participate.
It's all political though.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
intentionally using
another state's calendar wrong.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah.
Yeah, to get some
sort of advantage.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Question.
What are the surviving
mediums in which
these inscriptions are found?
What's some of the craziest
forms in which they
marked stuff down?
ALEXANDER MEYER: So the
ones that survive to us,
most of them come on stone.
We have only durable
materials mostly.
So most of them are on stone.
Many Roman inscriptions
are on bronze,
especially-- we
get a lot of them
from Spain, where they've
been basically hammered
into a bronze sheet.
Those are great,
except not many of them
ultimately survive
because they could
be melted down and made into
something more useful, which
people did.
Lots of things we know
were written on wood.
We still have
preserved from places
like Pompeii and
Herculaneum many,
many inscriptions that were
just written on plaster
walls, painted on them.
We have inscriptions that were
painted on ceramic as well,
so on pots and stuff, that
say what was in them or jugs
about how much they
had or who owned them,
how much was held in
it or who owned them.
From Vindolanda and
a few other places,
we have wooden writing tablets,
where they're just ink on wood.
And we have hundreds
of those surviving
and know that there must have
been an infinite number of them
in antiquity that just haven't
for various reasons survived
to us.
I think all sorts
of just household
implements that have
stuff written on them,
mostly just names
of people, sometimes
dirty poetry or little bits
of verse of some variety.
They come on all
sorts of things.
What else would you get?
I mean, you also get
things like mosaics.
And there was actually writing
in mosaics or pieces of glass
that have writing on
them, which are very cool.
And you blow the glass or
form it in some sort of mold.
It would put the
writing right into it.
Those are very cool.
What else do we have?
Pieces of armor,
weapons, anything.
AUDIENCE: Is it true that
people wrote inscriptions
on sling stones,
like Pilatus would--
ALEXANDER MEYER: Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: It would say,
like, F Mark Antony.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you see those on
pictures from World War II,
where they're like,
happy birthday, Hitler.
And then they send
the rocket shells off.
You get the same thing
from the ancient world.
Yeah.
They say mostly very
unfortunate things
about people and
members of their family
and what they should do
with these ballista balls
when they arrive at
their destination.
Yeah.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: So is
there any correlation
between sort of the
evolution of the technology
and the evolution
of these calendars?
Because it seems
from your talk almost
like the sort of basic
understanding of astronomy
is more or less there, and
the variations that are made
are largely driven by
politics or things like that.
But I'm just curious
as to whether there's
any sort of technology
running underneath
is as an undercurrent
as the calendars evolve.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Yeah, there is.
So when you get to
the 6th century or so,
really science becomes a thing.
People are really thinking
critically about the world
and trying to determine things.
You get people like
a guy named Meton,
who erected what looks like
some sort of sundial thing
on the Pnyx in
Athens to demonstrate
that this is how
the year progresses
and exactly how long it is.
And we can-- he actually
proposed a different cycle
for the number of years
and a more accurate one.
It wasn't really picked
up particularly rapidly.
But there are people who were
working on this sort of thing.
And it gets to the point where
better and better methods
of keeping time, like
short term time, were used.
And you could get to
a better calculation
than of what exactly
a year looked like
or what it felt
like or what it is.
But there's no great leap
really from the 5th century
to the end of the Roman world.
We start building clocks in the
Middle Ages, mechanical clocks.
But we have records of-- and
this is recorded in Vitruvius,
and we know from other
sources as well--
making water clocks
of various varieties.
And even Vitruvius records in
a sort of muddied fashion a way
to build a water
clock that could also
adjust for the length of days
at different times of year.
It doesn't seem to
have worked very well.
We may have a couple
fragments, two or three
fragments of these things in
the archaeological record.
But we at least know
that they existed
and that there were
much simpler water
clocks that were used in courts
and-- what do you call them?
Sand things.
What do we call those?
AUDIENCE: Hourgalss.
ALEXANDER MEYER: Hourglasses.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But yeah, ancient science
was slow to evolve,
especially sort of what you'd--
once they had done what they
could with the naked eye,
they were sort of stuck.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Did the Romans
impose their calendar
on their target subjects?
And did that spread
from Italy out?
ALEXANDER MEYER: Well,
the Greek city-states-- I
mean, as you see in this
inscription with Augustus,
continuing to use their
calendar in parallel
with the Roman calendar-- we
can see that at various times.
And then this Celtic
calendar-- we only
have the one copy of
the Coligny calendar.
But it seems like
other people would
use their calendar
separately and perhaps
for separate purposes.
But when we get correspondence
from the ancient world,
it's basically either a Greek
calendar or a Roman calendar.
But yeah, it's difficult
to say whether this
was by practice or by force,
whether people were using it
because it was actually
a better calendar
or because it was expressed
in a common language.
We're finding things
written in Latin.
They used the Latin
names for things.
But as far as I'm
aware, there's no decree
that went out saying that
everybody will use the Roman
calendar at all times.
It's a sort of haphazard thing.
And this is a huge
area of Roman studies
as well, to think
about the means
by which the cultural
changes were made,
whether this is a imperialistic
projection of Roman ideals
on other groups or whether
these groups willingly
do things to become more Roman.
And that's very
much open to debate.
And it is in itself a
sort of political issue.
As we're in this sort
of post-colonial world,
we want to empower the
colonial peoples rather than
the imperial powers.
And you can see that expressed
in scholarship all the time.
But it's very difficult to say.
That's it?
OK.
We can talk after.
Great.
Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]
