Calendrical Notes

[Clavdivs]

To-day is the sixth day before the Ides of January (ANTE DIEM VI IDVS IANVARII), in modern reckoning the eighth day of the month. It is marked C., DIES COMITIALIS.

The FASTI PRAENESTINI contains a fairly intact commentary by Verrius Flaccus:

''Business in Assembly. [Tiberius Caesar dedicated] the statue of Augustan Justice . . . [when Plancus] and Silius were consuls.''

The year of the consulship of C. Silius and L. Munatius Plancus was the year 13 C.E., of the City 766. According to the abstract of a paper by Mr.  R. Syme in the Journal of Roman Studies (Vol. 56, Issue I-II, November 1966, pp. 55-60), there is a degree of controversy over the form of the name of the first consul, with a longer form, C. Silius Caecina Largus, being suggested, as also over the duration of the consulship. It has been suggested there was at least one CONSVL SVFFECTVS (a consul appointed following the death of one already in office), possibly another, and perhaps even another pair of SVFFECTI?

It was also the year prior to the God Augustus' death and apotheosis in 14 C.E., the year of the consulship of Pompeius and Appuleius, of the City 767. According to a paper by Mr.  J.B. Lott, published in the 113th volume of the ''Zeitschrift fuer Papyrologie und Epigraphik'', that published in 1996, pp. 263-270 (once again, I regrettably cannot afford to purchase the paper at the moment), this statue was the ''earliest attested cult of IVSTITIA at Rome''.

Lott alludes to passages from the first letter in the second volume of the epistles of Ovid from his exile in the Black Sea, addressed to Germanicus, namely lines 25-34.

Germanicus, having won triumphal ornaments against the Dalmatians and Pannonians together with Tiberius in 9 C.E. (the year of the consulship of Sabinus and Camerinus, of the City 762) , which the latter delayed on account of the public mourning caused by the Varian disaster. Germanicus celebrated his delayed triumph in 13 C.E. (see above) and is thus addressed by Ovid:

''Thou [O Fame] didst tell me how, though for  many days before the cloudy Auster poured forth constant rain, the sun through heavenly power shone bright, the day matching the looks of the people; how the victor, honouring them with a loud voice, bestowed the warlike gifts upon the heroes he praised; how as he was about to don the embroidered vestments, the marks of glory, first he sprinkled incense on the sacred hearth, appeasing in purity the justice of his father which ever has a shrine in that breast ; how wherever he went, he received the happy omen of applause and the pavement blushed with dewy roses.''

Although Germanicus is apparently addressed, Tiberius was also a TRIVMPHATOR, and only he can be referred to here, as Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son [in 4 C.E., the year if the consulship of Catus and Saturninus, of the City 757], not Germanicus -- this sacrifice of incense to appease ''the justice of his father'' is perhaps the dedication of the statue of Augustan Justice.

See also the sixth letter of the third book, lines 23-26:

''And no-one is milder than our princeps, for Justice tempers his strength. Her Caesar but recently installed in a marble temple; long ago he enshrined her in his heart''.

Although this letter alludes to Augustus, it is at least possible that the allusion is to the dedication of Augustan Justice by Tiberius (if we take Caesar as Tiberius, a title he would have adopted as Augustus' son).