Weighing the Days

The day was the most important legal unit, for it was linked most directly to actions. Surviving sources make the relationship between days and action appear much more straightforward than it actually was. Roman jurisprudence assigned days to clear classes which might then be associated with permissible or impermissible activities. But classes sometimes overlapped with others, producing situations when particular days possessed different assemblages of norms. Unique events affected the significance of particular dates, a practice close to calendrical divination. Concern for the accumulation of norms on particular dates also affected record-keeping. Inscriptions and literary sources from at least as early as the beginning of the second century reveal a practice of placing events on definite months and days, but exhibit no concern for identifying years.