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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
All students of the classical languages are aware that, in referring to intervals of time, the Greeks and Romans often employed a method of reckoning which was inclusive and consequently different from our own. The Greeks, for example, refer to the period between two celebrations of the Olympic games (e.g. 776–772 B.C.) as a 
though we should call it a four-year interval. One instance of this kind of usage in Latin is the stereotyped formula employed in expressing a date: ante diem quintum Id. Mai. is 11 May, though we should say that there was an interval of four days only between 11 and 15 May. Another instance is the use of tertiana and quartana as applied to fevers which recur on alternate days and on every third day respectively. The ramifications of this mode of expression are extensive, but I am only concerned here with one, namely the use of quisque with ordinals.
1 There are also certain idiomatic usages with primus (e.g. prima quoque die = on the earliest possible day) with which I am not here concerned.
2 It should be noted that assignment to the G category is based on the absence, or inadequacy, of what might be called direct evidence of meaning. As will be seen in due course, it is possible to arrive at some probable conclusions with regard to these examples by inference from the practice of Latin authors generally, as exhibited in the examples under categories A and B.
1 Comparable Greek expressions are not free from ambiguity, but they can sometimes help to establish the sense.
1 A phrase from this translation, comprising a line and a half, is attributed by Nonius, p. 17 M, to Acorns' Prometheus. It seems clear, however, from Tusc. 2. 26 that Cicero claims the translation in general as his own. See Pohlenz's note in the Teubner text of Tusc.
1 id est alternis diebus, which Schmidt deletes, may well be an interpolation, but there can be no grounds for suspecting alternis diebus in the other places in this passage where it occurs.