I guess it surprises me that the Romans and Greeks didn’t figure out a better way to keep track of years. They knew what a day was, and they knew what a year was. Just pick a starting day and count forward from there. That would have been much easier than trying to remember who was Consul 70 years ago or whatever. Considering how civilized things were at the time it seems like a no-brainer.
Indeed, while not a “scholar”, I’m non-religious and while I try to remember to use “BCE/CE” if I’m communicating in a “formal/serious” way, in common usage when I have reason to refer to them I usually use BC/AD still simply because it was the norm during my formative years.
And of course even if one were religious–it is now broadly recognized that the actual birth year of Jesus almost certainly isn’t synced up with the BC/AD transition, I think the consensus is if historical Jesus existed he would’ve been born around 6 BCE.
They had large pillars in Rome that listed all the consuls in chronological order for this purpose. And lists of the consuls were printed to act as calendars.
Also, these weren’t just names to the Romans. These men were important political figures and their terms meant a lot more to the Romans then they did to us. They’d remember that Asiaticus was consul before Quinius the way an American would remember that Bush was president before Obama.
Why is this even remarkable? If, say, Cicero mentions the consulship of Marcellinus and Philippus in a letter, that was two years previously. Doesn’t sound too confusing. Surely you can today remember when Donald Trump was President, or even Ronald Reagan. If he mentions May 698, that’s clear too.
I think this is just because we are used to having a global year numbering system. If you think about it actually makes it quite a bit easier, Romans (well the senatorial class at least) would be well aware of who was consul at a particularly time. Saying “little johnny was born at the start of the first consulship of Bloggs and Jefferson” would have made perfect sense.
That’s fine for recent or unusually notable persons. If you say year 3 of Lincoln’s presidency that’s one thing. How about year 2 of Millard Fillmore’s presidency? How many people would know it was 1852 without looking it up? I sure didn’t.
But where is someone casually dropping names of consuls from 100 or more years previously, at least ones that were completely unnotable? (They could have looked it up too, of course.)
Just noting that the year in the Hebrew calendar dates from the beginning of the world (5782 now) which would work great if the universe had actually begun when they said it did.
But that’s the point. Their year system requires them to mention those names to refer to things that happened back then.
Can you give some examples? Maybe it makes more sense in context.
Well they generally didn’t need to, if you were referring to someone from 100 years previously, they people at the time would have noted that information, and they wouldn’t have been unnotable to them (as they were the current consul, which was a big deal to the senatorial class who are the ones writing the histories).
So the history scroll you are reading would refer to “so and so, born in the consulship of …” Just as a text nowdays would refer to “So and so, born in 1891”.
Its also worth pointing out (though a bit of a sidetrack) that it was Seneca’s mentee (and ultimate nemesis) Nero that was one of the big steps on the road from everyone pretending the republic was alive and well (and there was just a “first citizen” lending a helping hand to make sure everything went off without a hitch), to everyone just accepting they were ruled by emperors and basing life off that.
As Nero did not give a crap about the appearance of republican government or anything else that kept the Senatorial class happy, as he detested the senatorial class. This being one of the reasons he is so poorly reviewed as an emperor historically speaking (as the senatorial class are the ones writing the histories), he probably was a pretty bad emperor too, but if you piss of the people writing the histories you are not going to get the “rub of the green” when it comes to the “judgement of history”.
I think the main point about the statement “there was never a year 0” is to remind people to deduct a year if they calculate periods that extend across the epoch. If you want to know how many years there were between a certain event ona certain date in 5 BC and the same date in 5 AD, you’d be tempted to say ten years, which you’d mentally compute as five plus five. But it was in fact only nine years, because 1 AD came immediately after 1 BC. Both 1 BC and 1 AD are unambiguously defined years in the customary calendar system, but 0 isn’t.
One last point is the roman elites themselves were also way into genealogy. So if you had ancestors who achieved various prestigious positions during the reigns of past consuls (and especially if they actually managed to work their way up to being consul themselves) you would absolutely be taught that growing up. Even if no one in the current generation was close to those positions (which anyway by the era of Seneca had become empty titles for making the aristos feel better without any power),
In fact members of prestigious families would literally cosplay as their illustrious ancestors during certain religious festivals. Like “This year I’m going as great-great-uncle Lucius who became Aedile in the first year of the consulship of Giaus and Licidus”.
I think the idea of referring to years by holders of public office is not entirely alien to us in the modern age. You’ll often hear someone talk about “the Reagan years” or “the Victorian era”, with the tacit assumption that any educated listener would know which time this refers to. Obviously it’s more challenging to keep track of things if you have two new office holders to memorise every year, but the basic idea is not that strange.
You’re right that the conversion between AD and BC is tricky, especially if one mistakenly thinks BC is “negative” AD. But AD 0 is unambiguous–it can only mean 1 BC. (And, AD -1 is 2 BC, AD -2 is 3 BC, etc.) And similarly for 0 BC, which can only mean AD 1.
How much utility did a universal system for numbering years have for anybody other than a historian 2000 years ago? Timelines weren’t just more localized in ancient times; they were probably also more personal. Wouldn’t most people use terms like “when I was 12 years old” or “when my grandfather was 22”?
I respectfully disagree. It’s a very strange way to think about dates. I have never heard anyone provide me anything but a year when talking about something that happened in the past. If someone asked me what year I was born I would never say I was born during Eisenhower’s second year of his first term as President. People these days aren’t expected to know that off the top of their heads and I wouldn’t expect them to stop and look it up. When I tell people I was born in 1954 everyone knows what that means, and no prior knowledge is necessary. That’s not the way it was in Rome, and I get it, but I still think it’s a weird way to think about time.
Most Americans can’t even remember all of the Presidents, and we’ve only had 46 of those (well, technically 45, but 46 Presidencies). If they were Consuls, that’d only barely be enough to cover my lifetime. And even if you remember “Oh, yeah, Lucinius was the one who instituted that really great reform back when I was young”, was that the time when Lucinius was Consul with Quirinius, or when he was with Sextius, or when he was with Tullus?
It’s almost like what you think is weird is a cultural norm that has been developed in you since birth, and that Romans from 2000-2500 years ago do not share.