John Lydus: On the Months

rather than an indication that complete fasti were no longer used in later times.¹⁰³ Besides religious dates, John includes frequent notes on the astronomical and meteorological events tied to specific days of the year—for example, the risings and settings of stars and constellations, the activity of winds and stormy weather.¹⁰⁴ These "parapegmatic" (calendrical) details are already incorporated in the calendrical commentary genre in Ovid's Fasti.¹⁰⁵

The first book of De mensibus includes what seem to be remains of an overall history of the Roman calendar and religion, although much has been lost. Similarly, John's extant literary parallels such as Ovid and Macrobius also include at least some treatment of the history of the calendar along with the sequential account of the year, with discussion of Romulus' original calendar and Numa's modifications, for example, as well as (frequently) the reforms enacted by Julius Caesar.¹⁰⁶ It is possible that one of John's sources was a lost work of Suetonius. The Suda (a 10th-century encyclopedia) credits Suetonius with a single-book work "On the Roman Year"¹⁰⁷—and because of this, Wissowa in particular argued strenuously that a number of the later extant sources depended on this lost De anno Romanorum.¹⁰⁸ Bluhme supported Wissowa's views from the perspective of his examination of John's sources, building the case that John drew on excerpted Suetonian

103. M. R. Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1990), p. 7; for a list of extant ferialia (on stone and on papyrus), n. 18.
104. The technical term for such a list of astronomical / meteorological phenomena is parapegma, and Lehoux, pp. 387-392, includes extracts of this general type from De mensibus (with English translation) in his treatment and extensive collection of parapegmata in the ancient world. John's information frequently finds parallels in other parapegmata, in particular the lists found in Pliny, Columella, Geminus, and Clodius Tuscus (the latter transmitted by John himself in De ost. 59-70), but frequently diverges as well. He consistently cites names familiar from other such lists—Eudoxus, Euctemon, Democritus, Metrodorus, Philippus, Varro, Caesar, and so on—but not enough correlation occurs to pin down his source(s) with any confidence. See also E. Gee, Ovid, Aratus and Augustus (Cambridge, 2000), appendix 2, pp. 205-8, for the myriad difficulties in evaluating and interpreting the kinds of astronomical references found in such lists.
105. In later times, also in the calendar of Polemius Silvius (on the basis of Columella); cf. Degrassi, p. 263.
106. Ovid, Fasti 1.27-62; 3.9-166; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12-16.
107. Suda s.v. Τράγκυλλος; the Greek title is original: "περὶ τοῦ κατὰ Ῥωμαίους ἐνιαυτοῦ" (On the Year according to the Romans). The single "fragment" printed for this work by Roth is Censorinus 20.2, whereas Reifferscheid gives extensive material, especially from Isidore of Seville, which he judges to be derived from it (along with copious parallels and discussion), as fr. 113-23 (pp. 149-92); A. Macé, Essai sur Suétone (Paris, 1900), pp. 307-10, attempts to draw connections with passages in the biographies. Cf., briefly, A. Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars (London, 1983), pp. 48, 132; and for a critique of Reifferscheid's expansiveness (with further references), pp. 41-2; more positively with regard to Reifferscheid, see brief discussion and references in Sallmann, HLL 4: 23 (§404.B.1).
108. Wissowa, De Macrobii Saturnaliorum fontibus (Berlin, 1880), pp. 16-26 (etc.), building on Reifferscheid; see P. Mastandrea, Un neoplatonico latino: Cornelio Labeone, EPRO 77 (Leiden, 1979), pp. 15-21 for discussion.