# History of dating letters

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-of-dating-letters/310343>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 29, 2005, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-of-dating-letters/310343 "2005-06-29T12:03:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-of-dating-letters/310343/1 "2005-06-29T12:03:56Z")

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It would have been informative if for example if St Paul in his letters to the various Christian communities had dated them such as “in the 4th year of the reign of…”.

When did the practice of dating letters begin ?

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**Author:** ![JerH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bb73d2/32.png) [@JerH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerH)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-of-dating-letters/310343/2 "2005-06-29T15:46:58Z")

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First, Paul’s epistles weren’t “letters” in the traditional sense - that is, a message sent to a specific recipient, to communicate specific information. They were more in the lines of sermons sent to a community, and thus the time they were sent wasn’t a critical part of the message.

Though I have no cites, I suspect that dating was a part of letters and communications from early on. If, say, a field general were writing to the Emperor about troop locations, whether the message was sent on August 1 or August 10 would be a very critical piece of information. Knowing the date something was written was very important when the message could take several weeks (or longer) to arrive.

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**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2005, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-of-dating-letters/310343/3 "2005-06-29T19:57:04Z")

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Hundreds of letters survive from the Roman author Cicero (105-43 BCE). As you can see from the selection [here](http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/cicero-letters.html), his letters often included specific dates.

Of course, those are modern translations of the dates. Cicero would have expressed himself using the Roman calendar.