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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
The cycle of market days, or Nundinae, recurring at an interval of eight days, which was observed by the city of Rome and some other, at least, of the Italian cities—notably those of Campania—has been known to the modern world through two types of evidence—that of written sources and that of epigraphical documents. The written sources, except when they make only passing reference to this institution, as in the case of Cicero's Letters to Atticus and Cassius Dio's Roman History, are interested primarily in the origin and essential nature of the custom. Also, we hear from these written sources primarily of the Nundinae as observed at Rome itself. For the practice of other Italian cities in holding markets at eight-day intervals we are almost entirely dependent upon the evidence of calendars on stone, but to a less extent, and more recently, we have been fortunate in having added to this the evidence of graffiti.
2 Cicero, ad Att. i, 14. 1; iv, 3. 4. Cass. Dio xl, 47; xlviii, 33; lx, 24. References to the remainder of the written sources will be found in the article of M. Besnier in Daremberg-Saglio, Dict. des antiquités, iv, pp. 120–122.
3 A complete collection of the calendars preserved on stone and in manuscript was made by Mommsen, CIL i2, p. 205 ff. A full collection of the material which has since come to light will be found in Leuze's, O. ‘Bericht über die Literatur zur römischen Chronologie in den Jahren 1901–1928,’ Bursians Jahresbericht, 227 (1930), pp. 97–134Google Scholar. All these calendars have opposite each day its appropriate nundinal letter.
A complete collection of the existing tabulae nundinales was also made by Mommsen, CIL i2, p. 218. To this collection the past forty years have added one document only—the second column of the graffito published by M. Delia Corte in N. d. Scavi, 1927, p. 98.
4 Especially Mommsen, Th., Die römische Chronologie bis auf Caesar, 2nd ed., 1859Google Scholar; Huschke, Ph. E., Das alte römische Jahr und seine Tage, 1869Google Scholar; Flex, R., Die älteste Monatseintheilung der Römer, Diss. Jena, 1880Google Scholar; Hartmann, O. E., Der römische Kalender, 1882Google Scholar; Holzapfel, L., Römische Chronologie, 1885Google Scholar; Soltau, W., ‘Zur römischen Chronologie,’ Philologus xlvi (1891), p. 447ff.Google Scholar; and Huvelin, P., Essai historique sur le droit des marchés et des foires, 1897Google Scholar.
5 Such, for example, was the conclusion of M. Huvelin in his clear and excellent treatment of the subject (p. 88). It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the nundinal letters as they occur in the ancient calendars do not constitute names for the days of the nundinal cycle. The nundinal letters belong to the days of the year and not to the days of the nundinal cycle as such. That is, the first day of the year is always A, the second. B, etc.. and there is no question of the day of the Nundinae being always designated by the letter A or H or by any letter whatsoever. In any specific year the letter of the days upon which the Nundinae fall may be any of the letters A–H. If this point be kept clearly in mind Mommsen's reading ‘A dictus’ for ‘addictus’ in Macrobius i, 13, 17 appears to give even better sense than he claimed for it: nam quotiens incipiente anno dies coepit, qui A dictus est, Nundinis, omnis tile annus infaustis casibus luctuosus fuit…—that is, ‘For as often as at the beginning of the year the day which is called A began on the Nundinae all that year was filled with calamities.…’
6 To appear in the Preliminary Report of the Sixth Season of Excavations at Dura-Europos as inscription no 622.
7 The type is best represented by the parapegma found in 1812 on the wall of a room in the Thermae of Trajan at Rome. See the illustration in P-W s.v. ‘Kalender,’ co1. 1583. Another example which a affords perhaps even a closer Parallel to to the Dura calendar is the fragment published in CIL i2 p. 218. In this latter case the days of the seven-day week, the days of the lunar month, and a tabula nundinalis are combined.
8 The second row of three busts, below, seems to have been added by a later hand at a time when the list of the thirty days of the month was still in use, but the column beginning with ‘NVNDINE’ was or not. The motive for the addition of these three busts, if there was any, has escaped the present, writer.
9 See the material collected by M. Besnier, Daremberg-Saglio, iv, p. 122.
10 See the description and discussion of this house by Mr. F. E. Brown in Chapter I of the forth-coming Report of the Sixth Season of Excavations at Dura-Europos.
11 The fresco of the tribune, Iulius Terentius, was published by F. Cumont, Fouilles de Doura Europos, pl. 1. The fresco itself is now in the Yale University Gallery of Fine Arts. There is also a good copy in the Museo dell'Impero, Rome.
12 The precise nature of the Nundinae at Dura is a question upon which it is impossible to speak with full confidence, but we may suggest that they may have had a military significance. Perhaps we may compare the cycles of military routine established by Scipio Maior (Polybius x, 20, 2–3), Avidius Cassius (Vita Avidii Cassii vi, 2–3), and Maximinus (Vita Maximinorum vi, 2–3). The cycles were in these cases of four, six, and four days respectively.
13 Of course, the letters B H just under the word ‘NVNDINE’ cannot be ignored in interpreting the column. The explanation which we propose is that B–H indicates the possible range of the nundinal letters of the days upon which the day of the Nundinae might fall. That is, B—H is a note to the effect that the Nundinae are not permitted to fall on the first day of the year and the days following at eight-day intervals—the days designated by the letter A on the calendars. The superstition which required this avoidance in the Nundinae of Rome itself is very well attested (cf. especially Macrob. i, 13, 17, and Cass. Dio xlviii, 33). If the Nundinae at Dura were of a military character, as has been suggested above (note 12), it is quite possible that they were made to conform to the arrangement of the markets in the capital city.
14 Suetonius, Divus Augustus 92, 2: ‘observabat et dies quosdam, ne aut postridie nundinas quoquam profisceretur…’ might conceivably be brought to bear in support of our position, and it is at least interesting as confirming what can be proved independently.
15 Published by M. Delia Corte in N. d. Scavi, 1927, p. 98. He had already given it passing notice in Rivista indo-greco-italica di filologia, lingua, antichità, 8 (1924), 118.