Introduction

The project’s focus is on the calendar of republican Rome and the Julian reform, and its chief concern is its cultic and juristic significance. Cult rested most directly on rites, but it also involved law, which identified who might legitimately perform certain acts and where and when they might do so, and ideas about how the world worked, which might be implicit and poorly defined. The calendar’s days, months, and year were the crucial units, and all were tied in complicated ways both to the heavens and the activities of Rome’s priests and magistrates. In the ancient world, polities often sought to establish a homology with the heavens, ruled by the gods, and here calendars were crucial instruments. Studies of the Roman calendar often obscure these relationships, and studies of cult often devalue the importance of law.