The Reform of the Late Fourth Century

This chapter examines the introduction of the calendar ca. 300, which it makes part of the broad reconfiguration of the civic order that took place around this time. The calendar’s structure was probably appropriated from Pythagorean circles in southern Italy. Many of its features were intended to regulate the comitium , one of the most significant places in the city, which was also reconfigured in these years to link it firmly and directly to the heavens. The cycle of market-days or nundinae is also an important element. The logic behind it remains largely unexamined, and it has usually been viewed as having no cultic significance. Instead, the nundinal cycle was linked to formal intercalary cycles of the kind that in the Greek world were often associated with speculation about ideal political orders and their relationships with the gods.