#WingedWordsWindsday: A Calendrical Celebration for the New Year

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 10: January 5, 2022

 

 

A Calendrical Celebration for the New Year

 

Editor’s Note

                As far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated by calendars and their mysterious numerical intricacies. Since my sophomore year as a Classical Philology major at the University of Illinois, I have also been fascinated by an ancient Roman historical figure: Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome (reigned 715-673 BCE). In addition to keeping the peace for 39 of his 42 years on the throne, he also created many religious institutions and orders of clergy, and – perhaps most importantly for future history – he reformed the ancient Roman calendar, making January the first month of the year (instead of beginning the year in March, as his predecessor, King Romulus, had done).

                So in honor of the New Year and the month of January, here are some stories and poems about King Numa and his calendar, which is the direct ancestor of our own!

 

Historical Overview

Excerpted from B. G. Niebuhr’s History of Rome. Vol. 1, p. 237 ff. (1845)

                On the death of Romulus the senate at first would enjoy the royal power in rotation as interrex. In this way a year passed. The people, being treated more oppressively than before, were vehement in demanding the election of a sovereign to protect them. When the senate permitted it to be held, the Romans and Sabines disputed out of which nation the king should be taken. It was agreed that the former should choose him out of the latter: and all voices concurred in naming the wise and pious Numa Pompilius of Cures, who had married the daughter of Tatius.

                It was a very prevalent belief in antiquity that Numa had derived his knowledge from the Greek Pythagoras; Polybius and other writers attempted to show that this was impossible, for chronological reasons, inasmuch as Pythagoras did not come into Italy till the reign of Servius Tullius; but an impartial critic, who does not believe that the son of Mnesarchus was the only Pythagoras, or that there is any kind of necessity for placing Numa in the twentieth Olympiad, or, in fine, that the historical personality of Pythagoras is more certain than that of Numa, will be pleased with the old popular opinion, and will not sacrifice it to chronology.

                When Numa was assured by the auguries that the gods approved of his election, the first care of the pious king was turned, not to the rites of the temples, but to human institutions. He divided the lands which Romulus had conquered and had left open to occupancy. He founded the worship of Terminus. It was not till after he had done this that Numa set himself to legislate for religion. He was revered as the author of the Roman ceremonial law. Instructed by the Camena Egeria, who was espoused to him in a visible form, and who led him into the assemblies of her sisters in the sacred grove, he regulated the whole hierarchy; the pontiffs, who took care, by precept and by chastisement, that the laws relating to religion should be observed both by individuals and by the state; the augurs, whose calling it was to afford security for the councils of men by piercing into those of the gods; the flamens, who ministered in the temples of the supreme deities; the chaste virgins of Vesta; the Salii, who solemnized the worship of the gods with armed dances and songs. He prescribed the rites according to which the people might offer worship and prayer acceptable to the gods. To him were revealed the conjurations for compelling Jupiter himself to make known his will, by lightnings and the flight of birds: whereas others were forced to wait for these prodigies from the favor of the god, who was often silent to such as were doomed to destruction. This charm he learned from Faunus and Picus, whom, by the advice of Egeria, he enticed and bound in chains, as Midas bound Silenus in the rose garden. From this pious prince the god brooked such boldness. At Numa's entreaty he exempted the people from the terrible duty of offering up human sacrifices. But when the audacious Tullus presumed to imitate his predecessor, he was killed by a flash of lightning during his conjurations in the temple of Jupiter Elicius.

                The thirty-nine years of Numa's reign, which glided away in quiet happiness, without any war or any calamity, afforded no legends but of such marvels. That nothing might break the peace of his days, the ancile fell from heaven, when the land was threatened with a pestilence, which disappeared as soon as Numa ordained the ceremonies of the Salii. Numa was not a theme of song, like Romulus; indeed he enjoined that, among all the Camenae, the highest honors should be paid to Tacita. Yet a story was handed down, that, when he was entertaining his guests, the plain food in the earthenware dishes were turned on the appearance of Egeria into a banquet fit for gods, in vessels of gold, in order that her divinity might be made manifest to the incredulous. The temple of Janus, his work, continued always shut: peace was spread over Italy; until Numa, like the darlings of the gods in the golden age, fell asleep, full of days. Egeria melted away in tears into a fountain. 

The future King Numa (at left) visits the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (at right) in Croton, Italy. (Image Credit: Public Domain – 18^th Century French Painting)

 

Numa and Pythagoras

Excerpted from Book 15 of the Metamorphoses

By Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE)

English Translation by John Dryden (1631-1700)

A king is sought to guide the growing state,

One able to support the public weight

And fill the throne where Romulus had sate.

Renown, which oft bespeaks the public voice,

Had recommended Numa to their choice:

A peaceful, pious prince; who not content

To know the Sabine rites, his study bent

To cultivate his mind; to learn the laws

Of Nature, and explore their hidden cause.

Urged by this care, his country he forsook,

And to Crotona thence his journey took.

*                              *                              *

Here dwelt the man divine, whom Samos bore,

But now self-banished from his native shore,

Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear

The chains, which none but servile souls will wear.

He, though from Heaven remote, to Heaven could move,

With strength of mind, and tread the abyss above;

And penetrate, with his interior light,

Those upper depths, which Nature hid from sight:

And what he had observed, and learnt from thence,

Loved in familiar language to dispense.

The crowd with silent admiration stand,

And heard him, as they heard their God's command;

While he discoursed of Heaven's mysterious laws,

The world's original, and Nature's cause;

And what was God; and why the fleecy snows

In silence fell, and rattling winds arose;

What shook the steadfast Earth, and whence begun

The dance of planets round the radiant sun;

If thunder was the voice of angry Jove,

Or clouds, with niter pregnant, burst above:

Of these, and things beyond the common reach,

He spoke, and charmed his audience with his speech.

*                              *                              *

These precepts by the Samian sage were taught,

Which godlike Numa to the Sabines brought,

And thence transferred to Rome, by gift his own:

A willing people, and an offered throne.

O happy monarch, sent by Heaven to bless

A savage nation with soft arts of peace,

To teach religion, rapine to restrain,

Give laws to lust, and sacrifice ordain:

Himself a saint, a goddess was his bride,

And all the Muses over his acts preside.

Advanced in years he died; one common date

His reign concluded, and his mortal state.

 

“Universe of Pythagoras” from Dante and the Early Astronomers (1913 – Public Domain).

 

Life of Numa (Chapter 18)

By Plutarch (46-120 CE)

English Translation from the Loeb Classical Library (1914 – Public Domain)

                He applied himself, also, to the adjustment of the calendar, ​ not with exactness, and yet not altogether without careful observation. For during the reign of Romulus, they had been irrational and irregular in their fixing of the months, reckoning some at less than twenty days, some at thirty-five, and some at more; they had no idea of the inequality of the annual motions of the Sun and Moon, but held to this principle only, that the year should consist of three hundred and sixty days. But Numa, estimating the extent of the inequality at eleven days, since the lunar year had three hundred and fifty-four days, but the solar year three hundred and sixty-five, doubled these eleven days, and every other year inserted after the month of February the intercalary month called Mercedinus by the Romans, which consisted of twenty-two days. This correction of the inequality which he made was destined to require other and greater corrections in the future.

                He also changed the order of the months. March, which had been first, he made the third month, and January, which had been the eleventh month under Romulus, he made the first month; February, which had been twelfth and last, thus became the second month, as now. But there are many who say that these months of January and February were added to the calendar by Numa, and that at the outset the Romans had only ten months in their year, as some barbarians have three, and as, among the Greeks, the Arcadians have four, and the Acarnanians six; the Egyptian year had at first only a single month in it, afterwards four, as we are told. And therefore, though they inhabit a very recent country, ​ they have the credit of being a very ancient people, and load their genealogies with a prodigious number of years, since they really count their months as so many years.

 

“Thirty Days Hath September”

(Anonymous – Traditional Rhyme of Lore)

Thirty days has September,

April, June, and November,

All the rest have thirty-one,

Save February at twenty-eight,

But leap year, coming once in four,

February then has one day more.

 

“The Months”

By Sara Coleridge (1802-1852)

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes loud and shrill,
Stirs the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daises at our feet.
May brings flocks of pretty lambs,
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hand with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit,
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasants,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
Dull November brings the blast,
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.