1 Earliest Rome

3.3 The calendar of Rome
1. Veneralia means a festival of Verms. See 3.3b n.2 for worship of Venus Verticordia on
this day.
2. The birthdays and games were added to the calendar at some point after the early first
century A.D.
3. Egyptian day: an astrological term, first attested in the fourth century A.D., of which lit­
tle more is known.
A. .See 3.3a n.2; 2.7a. Each month in this calendar is illustrated; the illustration for April
(shown here from a sixteenth-century manuscript), which depicts a male dancing in
front of an image of (perhaps) Attis, probably evokes the Megalesia (Saizman (1990)
83-91). Figure: c. 0.20 m. high.
For another illustration from this calendar, see 5-3b.
5. Septimius Severus, deified A.D. 211.
6. The Parilia is now referred to simply as the Birthday of the City; see 5.1c.
7. This festival may have been introduced in A.D. 217 with the building of a temple to
Serapis on the Quirinal (Vol. 1. 383), but the festival is already found in the first-century
A,D. almanacs (3-3c).
8. Marcus Aurelius, born A.13. 121.
69