John Lydus: On the Months

established a 10-month year—and the pre-history of Rome involving the migration of people from Asia and Greece to Italy; all this comes out clearly in the existing fragments. In order, then, he appears to have treated Cronus (1.1), the Lydians (1.2-5), the Greeks, including Evander and Odysseus (1.6-12), then Aeneas (1.13), Romulus' foundation of the city (1.14-16), and finally Numa's reign and institutions (1.17ff.). The material Wuensch prints as 1.37-40 reflects material that originally would have appeared in various parts of the book:93. It is tempting to suppose that John's discussion of Tages, Tyrrhenus, and Tarchon in De ost. 2-3 provides a further sample of the origin legends he provided in this context: in particular, he says that Tarchon learned divination from Tyrrhenus (cf. Cato, Origines fr. 45 HRR = fr. 70 Cornell, describing Tarchon as the son of Tyrrhenus). 1.37 on the Lydians and their rituals gives a glimpse of the early part of the book, while its reference to Numa's adaptation of Etruscan elements summarizes a later part; 1.38 presumably refers to the section of the book dealing with Romulus.

With the remaining books, whose titles are preserved and whose text is less mutilated in its broad outlines, the structure becomes quite clear. Book 2 deals with the definition of the day and then goes through the days of the week one by one to discuss their astronomical and symbolic significance. Book 3 treats the nature of the month and its position within the year as a whole, then the internal divisions and significant days within the month, with consideration of the moon and its movements and phases leading to a broader discussion of the movements of the planets and further time divisions—with the remains of the latter part of the book being significantly less tightly ordered than the earlier part. Finally, in Book 4, John discusses each month of the Roman calendar in sequence; for each month, the beginning exposition of the name of the month and any associated deities often leads to more extended discussions, but each of these individual sections then turns to the significant days within the month, with accounts of religious festivals and astronomical / meteorological phenomena appearing in sequence. In all sections, there is ample room for digressive developments, even in the parts of the work with the most strongly evident structural transparency.

The longest and best-known part, the fourth book, is a systematic month-by-month account, partly resembling a festal calendar, like the inscribed fasti (Roman records of days and festivals) of which numerous fragments have been found, or rather, on a more literary level including explanations of dates and practices, Ovid's Fasti.94. See Rüpke, Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: Die Geschichte der Repräsentation und religiösen Qualifikation von Zeit in Rom (Berlin, 1995), partly translated into English as The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History and the Fasti (Chichester, 2011), for the inscribed fasti; for the inscriptional fragments themselves, see A. Degrassi (ed.), Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 13: Fasti et elogia, fasc. 2: Fasti anni Numani et Iuliani (1963). Rüpke, "Ovids Kalenderkommentar: Zur Gattung der libri fastorum," Antike und Abendland 40 (1994), pp. 125-9, argues for the importance of differentiating the commentary on the calendar (e.g., Ovid's text) from the simple calendar; cf. also W. Fauth, "Römische Religion im Spiegel der 'Fasti' des Ovid," ANRW II.16.1: 104-86; J. Scheid, "Myth, cult and reality in Ovid's 'Fasti,'" Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 38 (1993), pp. 118-32. Generally on Ovid's sources including calendrical writings, see F. Bömer (ed.), P. Ovidius Naso: Die Fasten, vol. 1 (Heidelberg, 1957), pp. 22-44.