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Roman Dates

The Romans measured the passing days in a way that is delightfully complex. Here is a brief introduction, with concepts listed in roughly ascending complexity.

• All numbers are written with Roman numerals. This site uses the convention of writing year numbers with upper-case letters and day numbers with lower-case.
• "A.D." before the year number is an abbreviation of Anno Domini, "Year of the Lord". Years are numbered from the year that began one week after the traditional birth date of Jesus Christ.
• The months are easy since in the English-speaking world today we use the same months that the Romans set down in their calendar reform of 8 B.C. with only small spelling variations.

  	Latin Month	Abbreviation	English Month
  1.	IANVARIVS	ian.	January
  2.	FEBRVARIVS	feb.	February
  3.	MARTIVS	mar.	March
  4.	APRILIS	apr.	April
  5.	MAIVS	mai.	May
  6.	IVNIVS	ivn.	June
  7.	IVLIVS	ivl.	July
  8.	AVGVSTVS	avg.	August
  9.	SEPTEMBER	sept.	September
  10.	OCTOBER	oct.	October
  11.	NOVEMBER	nov.	November
  12.	DECEMBER	dec.	December

• For designating days, the Romans had three specially named days in each month, kalendae (abbreviated kal.) the first day of each month (originally the day of the new moon), nonae (non.) was the seventh day of March, May, July, October, and the fifth day of all other months, and idus (id.) the fifteenth day of March, May, July, October, and the thirteenth day of all other months. Days were designated as follows:
  • The named days kalendae, nonae, idus.
  • Days immediately preceding a named day by writing pridie (prid.) before the name of the following day.
  • Other days were designated with the number of days before the next named day, counting the named day itself, and writing it as "ante diem (a.d., not to be confused with A.D. of years) number-of-days-before-named-day next-named-day". (Days after the idus of a month would be designated by the number of days before the kalendae of the following month, so the date would be written with the month to which the kalendae belonged rather than the month in which the day concerned fell.)

EXEMPLI GRATIA

NONIS FEBRUARIIS (non. feb.) = February 5

KALENDIS APRILIBUS (kal. apr.) = April 1

IDIBUS MARTIIS (id. mar.) = March 15

DIE VII ANTE IDUS MARTIAS (a.d. vii id. mar.) = March 9

PRIDIE KALENDAS IANVARIAS (prid. kal. ian.) = December 31

A calendar for March (MARTIVS):

NEXVS

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Neocities