Sometimes small cultural oddities can speak volumes about how a society thinks of itself.
In ancient Rome, the family was seen as a microcosm of the state. The father figure
was seen as the Consul, or King, or Emperor of the household. Rebellion against the family-King
was seen as a pseudo-treasonous act, and his freedom to "rule" over his "subjects" was
almost limitless.
A distorted version of this power dynamic was also true in politics. The ultimate public
compliment was to refer to another man - even a younger man - as "father." Politically motivated
adoptions were pretty common, even between two men of similar ages. The Senate even had
the authority to designate a citizen the "Father of the State." This prestigeous title was
awarded to Cicero after thwarting a coup attempt as Consul. The Senate could pay no higher
compliment.
Why am I bringing any of this up? I want to illustrate how the Romans saw private and
public life as mirror images of each other. To be a good Consul was to act like a good
father. To be a good father was to rule like a good king. This dualistic relationship between
public and private life permeated all levels of Roman society. In order to better understand
this, I want to talk for a minute about how the Romans perceived time.
When the Romans spoke about events from their ancient history, they used a version of the
yearly counting system that we still use today. Year 1 for them was the year that the city
was founded, and they simply counted up from there. But what may surprise you is that in
practice, nobody besides priests and historians really used this system in day to day life.
The yearly dating system that they used was itself rooted in politics. If somebody was
asked what year they were born in, the answer would be something like "in the year of Marius
and Flaccus." They would list the Consuls that served for that year. No number given,
just the two names. But without missing a beat, everybody would have known know exactly
what year was being referred to.
Think about the implications of this. This meant that the average Roman citizen would
have had an encyclopedic knowledge of every Consul from living memory. Obviously this
also speaks to the immense prestige of being elected Consul in the first place. If you
were elected Consul, you got to "be" a year. That's incredible.
Imagine if I were to say something absurd like "I was born during President Reagan's
4th year. You would need to track down a political junkie and an abbacus just figure out what
I was trying to say.
Romans talked about days in a strange way as well. We are inheritors of the Roman calender,
so interpreting it should feel pretty natural to us, but it doesn't.
They would never say anything like "the 12th of July." They could've! They had a calender
with that day on it. But they didn't. In practice, they would always place the date in relation
to the nearest important public holiday. In this case, they would have said "I was born
four days before the Ides of Quintilis " (which we now call July.)
So when we combine the date and year I just used, we get Julius Caesar's birthday, which
according to the Romans would have been "four days before the Ides of Quintilis (July 12),
in the year of Marius and Flaccus (100 BCE)." According to us it was July 12th, 100 B.C.E.
Between you and me, I'm glad we switched to our system.
Anyway, what I want to draw your attention to is this: even relatively small quirks,
like how the Romans described time, can tell us a lot about the culture's basic ideology.
Political literacy was, by design, a mandatory part of day to day life. Romans couldn't plan
for the future or reminisce about the past without placing it in a political, or at least
civic-minded context. That, I think, is key to understanding their society.