- Ab urbe condita
"Ab Urbe condita" (related with Anno Urbis conditae: AUC or a.u.c.) is
Latin for "from the founding of the City (Rome )", [Literally translated as "From the city having been founded".] traditionally set in 753 BC. It was used to identify the Roman year by a few Roman historians. Modern historians use it much more frequently than the Romans themselves did; the dominant method of identifying Roman years was to name the twoconsul s who held office that year. Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.Fact|date=July 2008 The regnal year of the emperor was also used to identify years, especially in theByzantine Empire afterJustinian required its use in 537. Examples of usage are principally found in German authors, for example Mommsen's "History of Rome".ignificance
From Emperor
Claudius onwards, Varro's calculation (see below) superseded other contemporary calculations. Celebrating the anniversary of the city became part of imperialpropaganda . Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honour of the city's anniversary, in 47, eight hundred years after the founding of the city. In 121,Hadrian , and in 147/8,Antoninus Pius held similar celebrations.In 248,
Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's firstmillennium , together withLudi saeculares forRome 's alleged tenthsaeculum .Coin s from his reign commemorate the celebrations. A coin by a contender for the imperial throne,Pacatianus , explicitly states "Year one thousand and first", which is an indication that the citizens of the Empire had a sense of the beginning of a new era, a "Saeculum Novum".When the Roman Empire turned Christian in the following century, this imagery came to be used in a more metaphysical sense.
Calculation by Varro
The traditional date for the founding of Rome of
April 21 , 753 BC, was initiated by Varro. Varro may have used the consular list with its mistakes, and called the year of the first consuls "245 "ab urbe condita", accepting the 244-year interval fromDionysius of Halicarnassus for the kings after the foundation of Rome. The correctness of Varro's calculation has not been proved scientifically but is still used worldwide.Calculation by Dionysius Exiguus
The
Anno Domini system was developed by a monk namedDionysius Exiguus in Rome in 525, as an outcome of his work on calculating the date of Easter. In his Easter table Dionysius equates the year AD 532 with the regnal year 248 of Emperor Diocletian. He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. At the beginning, his time calculation was limited on a small circle in Rome. It counted the years no longer after the accession of the emperor and Christian pursuerDiocletian (20 November 284 ), but starting from "incarnatione Domini", the birth of Christ. Exiguus is writing: "sed magis elegimus ab incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi annorum tempora praenotare..." [Liber de Paschate, MignePatrologia Latina [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC12663742&id=LcEYeL-4ZuEC&pg=PP10&lpg=PP10&dq=%22in+hoc+tomo+LXVII#PRA1-PT165,M1 67 page 481 note f] ] Because Dionysius Exiguus did not place the Incarnation in an explicit year, competent scholars have deduced both AD 1 and 1 BC. Later it was calculated by scholars that the year AD 1 corresponds to the Roman year DCCLIV ab urbe condita. EmperorAugustus was not called "Augustus", but "Imperator Caesar Divi filius" in the years 30 - 27 BC. This time could be forgotten by Exiguus. And a "year zero " does not exist in the Christian calendar:...1 ab urbe condita = 753 before Christ
...2 ab urbe condita = 752 BC
...3 ab urbe condita = 751 BC ...
750 ab urbe condita = 4 BC (Death of
Herod the Great )751 ab urbe condita = 3 BC
752 ab urbe condita = 2 BC
753 ab urbe condita = 1 BC
754 ab urbe condita = 1
Anno Domini 755 ab urbe condita = 2 AD
2761 ab urbe condita = 2008 AD
Alternative calculations
According to
Velleius Paterculus the foundation of Rome took place 437 years after the capture of Troy (1182 BC). It took place shortly before aneclipse of the Sun that was observed at Rome onJune 25 , 745 BC and had a magnitude of 50.3%. Its beginning occurred at 16:38, its middle at 17:28, and its end at 18:16.However, according to Lucius Tarrutius of Firmum,
Romulus and Remus were conceived in the womb on the 23rd day of the Egyptian month Choiac, at the time of a total eclipse of the Sun. (This eclipse occurred onJune 15 , 763 BC, with a magnitude of 62.5% at Rome. Its beginning took place at 6:49, its middle at 7:47 and its end at 8:51.) He was born on the 21st day of the month Thoth. The first day of Thoth fell onMarch 2 in that year. [(Prof. E.J. Bickerman, 1980: 115)] Rome was founded on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, which wasApril 21 , as universally agreed. The Romans add that about the time Romulus started to build the city, an eclipse of the Sun was observed by Antimachus, the Teian poet, on the 30th day of the lunar month. This eclipse onJune 25 , 745 BC (see above) had a magnitude of 54.6% at Teos, Asia Minor. It started at 17:49; it was still eclipsed at sunset, at 19:20. Romulus vanished in the 54th year of his life, on the Nones of Quintilis (July), on a day when theSun was darkened. The day turned into night, which sudden darkness was believed to be an eclipse of the Sun. It occurred onJuly 17 , 709 BC, with a magnitude of 93.7%, beginning at 5:04 and ending at 6:57. (All these eclipse data have been calculated by Prof. Aurél Ponori-Thewrewk, retired director of the Planetarium of Budapest.) Plutarch placed it in the 37th year from the foundation of Rome, on the fifth of our July, then called Quintilis, [Quintilis, on "Caprotine Nones," Livy (I, 21)] also states that Romulus ruled for 37 years. He was slain by the senate or disappeared in the 38th year of his reign. Most of these have been recorded byPlutarch , [("Lives" of Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Camillus), Plutarch] Florus, [ (Book I, I), Florus] Cicero, [("The Republic" VI, 22: "Scipio's Dream"), Cicero ] Dio (Dion) Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (L. 2). Dio in his "Roman History" (Book I) confirms this data by telling that Romulus was in his 18th year of age when he had founded Rome. Thus, three eclipse calculations may support the suggestion that Romulus reigned from 746 BC to 709 BC, and Rome was founded in 745 BC.Q. Fabius Pictor (c. 250 BC) tells that Roman consuls started for the first time 239 years after Rome's foundation ("Enciclopedia Italiana," XIV, 1951: 173). Livy (I, 60) gives almost the same, 240 years for that interval.
Polybius [ Polybius, "The Histories" (III, 22. 1-2)] tells that 28 years after the expulsion of the last Persian king Xerxes crossed over toGreece , and that event is fixed to 478 BC by twosolar eclipse s. [References: Theodor Mommsen, History of Rome (1854 - 1856)]ee also
*
List of Latin phrases Notes and references
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.