Roman Calendars: Imperial Birthdays, Victories and Triumphs

The revolutionary nature of Augustus' power manifested itself in numerous aspects of daily life. One of these was the control of time: by introducing numerous celebrations related to the Emperor and to his family to the calendars, Augustus reshaped the temporal rhythm of city life. By creating a dialogue between a rich epigraphic corpus and many literary texts, this study will reconstruct the diachronic evolution of the methods of celebrating birthdays, military victories and triumphs. Moreover, it will reflect on if and how these festivals assumed the role of public anniversaries by exploring the different ways in which they were recorded in different sources and their reception by Romans of different social classes. Particular attention will also be given to the dates of dedication of the inscriptions that record the day of these celebrations in order to understand if the day chosen was influenced by its historical meaning or it was just mere coincidence. Overall, this book will show that the calendars are a mirror that reflects different socio-political issues and therefore function as a lens through which we can better understand the political history of Ancient Rome.