The order of the calendar throughout the Latin year, its causes, and the starry signs that set beneath the earth and rise again, of these I’ll sing. Caesar Germanicus, accept with brow serene this work and steer the passage of my timid bark. Spurn not the honour slight, but come propitious as a god to take the homage vowed to thee. Here shalt thou read afresh of holy rites unearthed from annals old, and learn how every day has earned its own peculiar mark. There too shalt thou find the festivals pertaining to thy house; often the names of thy sire and grandsire will meet thee on the page. The laurels that are theirs and that adorn the painted calendar, thou too shalt win in company with thy brother Drusus. Let others sing of Caesar’s wars; my theme be Caesar’s altars and the days he added to the sacred roll. Approve my effort to rehearse the praises of thy kin, and cast out quaking terrors from my heart. Show thyself mild to me; so shalt thou lend vigour to my song; at thy look my Muse must stand or fall. Submitted to the judgement of a learned prince my page doth shiver, even as if sent to the Clarian god to read. On thy accomplished lips what eloquence attends, we have seen, when it took civic arms in defence of trembling prisoners at the bar. And when to poetry thy fancy turns, we know how broad the current of thy genius flows. If it is right and lawful, guide a poet’s reins, thyself a poet, that under thy auspices the year may run its entire course happy.
When the founder of the city was setting the calendar in order, he ordained that there should be twice five months in his year. To be sure, Romulus, thou wert better versed in swords than stars, and to conquer thy neighbours was thy main concern. Yet, Caesar, there is a reason that may have moved him, and for his error he might urge a plea. The time that suffices for a child to come forth from its mother’s womb, he deemed sufficient for a year. For just so many months after her husband’s funeral a wife supports the signs of sorrow in her widowed home. These things, then, Quirinus in his striped gown had in view, when to the simple folk he gave his laws to regulate the year. The month of Mars was the first, and that of Venus the second; she was the author of the race, and he his sire. The third month took its name from the old, and the fourth from the young; the months that trooped after were distinguished by numbers. But Numa overlooked not Janus and the ancestral shades, and so to the ancient months he prefixed two.
But that you may not be unversed in the rules of the different days, not every morning brings the same round of duty. That day is unlawful on which the three words may not be spoken; that day is lawful on which the courts of law are open. But you must not suppose that every day keeps its rules throughout its whole length: a lawful day may have been unlawful in the morning; for as soon as the inwards have been offered to the god, all words may lawfully be spoken, and the honoured praetor enjoys free speech. There are days, too, on which the people may lawfully be penned in the polling-booths; there are also days that come round ever in a cycle of nine. The worship of Juno claims Ausonia’s Calends: on the Ides a bigger white ewe-lamb falls to Jupiter: the Nones lack a guardian god. The day next after all these days—make no mistake—is black. The omen is drawn from the event; for on those days Rome suffered grievous losses under the frown of Mars. These remarks apply to the whole calendar; I have made them once for all, that I may not be forced to break the thread of my discourse.
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