Ancient Roman years.

Helpless Rock

Kind of an unsually question to ask here, but I haven't been having much luck on my google searches to find an answer.

I am writing a story that is set in Ancient Rome. 50BC, during Ceasar so I'd also need it to be consistant with the calendar he put forward. But in my research I can't seem to find a good answer for what they, at the time, called the year. They obviously didn't have the concept of BC and AD and all tracking of the years now have it going numerically backwards until 1AD. So, I don't think the Romans would say it's the year 50 and the next year would be 49.

Anyone here happen to know the answer to this?

naporeon

This is actually a fairly complex subject. Years were usually identified in one of three ways: by the election of the consul, by the rule of the Emperor, or by a method called ab urbe condita ("from the founding of [Rome]").

EDIT: In fact, the Wikipedia article for ab urbe condita lays out all three of these methods, as it turns out.

Foomy

as far as I remember ancient Romans didn't really number years until the introduction of the Julian calendar. Before that they would refer to years by the 2 consuls elected that year and the regnal year of the emperor at the time.

edit:

so 50bc would be something like "The year of the consuls Aemilius Lepidus Paullus and Claudius Marcellus Minor"

jothki

According to the internet, that's also before the Julian Calender was instituted (45 BC), so bear that in mind as well.

Helpless Rock

Looks like I got a lot more research to do. I missed that whole ab urbe condita so thanks for that Naporeon.

jothki

Just remember that for the most part, the Romans also missed the ab urbe condita.

RadicalTurnip

By far the most common (at this is true for a hundred years later) was by the reign of the emperor at the time. So like "In the second year of the reign of Julius Caesar". Although, come to think about it, Caesar was pretty much the first emperor, so that way of dating is probably a little more recent than 50BC

MulysaSempronius

Slight correction-Julius was not an emporer. Augustus was the first.
And it seemed to me that the Romans were rather lax about exactness in a lot of their dates. Festival dates , etc were important. But not every day.

Unknown

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Blarghy

Also, keep in mind that if your story is set in 50 BC (or 704 AUC), Caesar did not implement his Julian calendar until a few years later in 46/45 BC. In addition to the consular years and AUC, the Greek method of counting by Olympiads was also widespread in the Roman world at the time too.