DIES
DIES (of the same root as
δῖος
and
dens, Curtius,
Gr. Etym. No. 269). The
name
dies was applied, like our word day, to
the time during which, according to the notions of the ancients, the sun
performed his course round the earth; and this time they called the civil
day (dies civilis, in Greek
νυχθήμερον, because it included both night and
day. See Censorin.
de Die Nat. 23;
Plin. Nat. 2.188;
Macr.
1.3). The natural day (
dies
naturalis), or the time from the rising to the setting of the sun,
was likewise designated by the name
dies. The
civil day began with the Athenians at the setting of the sun, and with the
Romans (as with the Egyptians and Hipparchus) at mid-night ; with the
Babylonians at the rising of the sun, and with the Umbrians at mid-day.
(Macrob.
l.c.; Gellius,
3.2.) We have here only to consider the natural day; and as its
subdivisions were different at different times, and not always the same
among the Greeks as among the Romans, we shall endeavour to give a brief
account of the various parts into which it was divided by the Greeks at the
different periods of their history, and then proceed to consider its
divisions among the Romans, to which will be subjoined a short list of
remarkable days.
At the time of the Homeric poems, the natural day was divided into three
parts (
Il. 21.111). The first, called
ἠώς, began with
[p. 1.635]sunrise, and comprehended the whole space of time during which
light seemed to be increasing, i. e. till mid-day. (
Il. 8.66,
9.84;
Od. 9.56.) Some ancient grammarians have
supposed that in some instances Homer used the word
ἠὼς for the whole day, but Nitzsch (
Anmerkungen zur
Odyssee, 1.125) has shown the incorrectness of this opinion. The
second part was called
μέσον ἦμαρ or
mid-day, during which the sun was thought to stand still. (Hermias,
ad Plat.
Phaedr. p. 342.) The third
part bore the name of
δείλη or
δείελον ἦμαρ (
Od.
17.606; compare Buttman's
Lexilog. ii. n. 95),
which derived its name from the increased warmth of the atmosphere. The last
part of the
δείλη was sometimes designated
by the words
ποτὶ ἕσπερα or
βουλυτός (
Od.
17.191;
Il. 16.779). Besides these
three great divisions, no others seem to have been known at the time when
the Homeric poems were composed. (Cf. Buchholz,
Hom. Realien,
1.39-42.) The chief information respecting the divisions of the day in the
period after Homer, and more especially the divisions made by the Athenians,
is to be derived from Pollux (
Onom. 1.68). The first and last
of the divisions made at the time of Homer were afterwards subdivided into
two parts. The earlier part of the morning was termed
πρωῒ or
πρὼ τῆς ἡμέρας:
the later, i. e. from 9 or 10 till noon,
πληθούσης
τῆς ἀγορᾶς, or
περὶ πλήθουσαν
ἀγορὰν (
Hdt. 4.181;
Xen. Memorab. 1.1, §
10,
Hellen. 1.1, § >30; Dion
Chrysost.
Orat. lxvii.). The
μέσον ἦμαρ of Homer was afterwards expressed
by
μεσημβρία, μέσον ἡμέρας, or
μέση ἡμέρα, and comprehended, as before, the
middle of the day, when the sun seemed neither to rise nor to decline. The
two parts of the afternoon were called
δείλη
πρωΐη or
πρωΐα, and
δείλη ὀψίη or
ὀψία (
Hdt. 7.167,
8.6;
Thuc. 3.74,
8.26;
Xen. Anab.
1.8,
8; compare Libanius,
Epist. 1084). This division continued to be observed down
to the latest period of Grecian history, though another more accurate
division, and more adapted to the purposes of common life, was introduced at
an early period; for Anaximander, or according to others, his disciple
Anaximenes, is said to have made the Greeks acquainted with the use of the
Babylonian chronometer or sun-dial (called
πόλος or
ὡρολόγιον, sometimes
with the epithet
σκιοθηρικόν or
ἡλιαμάνδρον), by means of which the natural day
was divided into twelve equal spaces of time. (
Hdt.
2.109;
D. L. 2.1,
3;
Plin. Nat. 2.187; Suidas,
s. v.
Ἀναξίμανδρος.) These spaces were,
of course, longer or shorter according to the various seasons of the year.
The name hours (
ὧραι), however, did not
come into general use till a very late period, and the difference between
natural and equinoctial hours was first observed by the Alexandrine
astronomers.
During the early ages of the history of Rome, when artificial means of
dividing time were yet unknown, the natural phenomena of increasing light
and darkness formed with the Romans, as with the Greeks, the standard of
division, as we see from the vague expressions in Censorinus (
de Die Nat. 24). Pliny states (
H. N.
7.212) that in the Twelve Tables only the rising and the setting of the sun
were mentioned as the two parts into which the day was then divided, but
from Censorinus (
l.c.) and Gellius (
17.2) we learn that mid-day (
meridies) was also mentioned. Varro (
L. L.
6.4, 5) and Isidore (
Orig. 5.30 and 31) likewise
distinguished three parts of the day, viz.
mane,
meridies, and
suprema, scil.
tempestas, after which no assembly could be
held in the forum (cf.
XII. Tabb. in Censor. 24: “Solis
occasus suprema tempestas esto” ). The Lex Plaetoria prescribed
that a herald should proclaim the
suprema in
the comitium, that the people might know that their meeting was to be
adjourned (Varr.
L. L. 6.5). But the division of the day most
generally observed by the Romans, was that into
tempus
antemeridianum and
pomeridianum,
the
meridies itself being only considered as a
point at which the one ended and the other commenced. As it was of
importance that this moment should be known, an officer [ACCENSUS] of the consuls was directed to proclaim
the time of mid-day, when from the Curia he saw the sun standing between the
Rostra and the Graecostasis. The division of the day into twelve equal
spaces, which, here as in Greece, were shorter in winter than in
summer,
1 was adopted at the time when artificial means of measuring time were
introduced among the Romans from Greece. This was about the year B.C. 293,
when L. Papirius Cursor, before the war with Pyrrhus, brought to Rome an
instrument called solarium horologium, or simply solarium. (Plaut. ap.
Gellium, 3.3.5;
Plin. Nat. 7.212). In
B.C. 263 M. Valerius Messala brought one which he had taken at the capture
of Catina; and although this was incorrect, having been constructed for a
place 4° further south than Rome, it was in use for 99 years, before
the error was discovered. In B.C. 164 the censor Q. Marcius Philippus had a
more exact sun-dial constructed; but the time was still unknown in cloudy
weather (Plin.
l.c.). Scipio Nasica, therefore,
erected in B.C. 159 a public clepsydra, which indicated the hours of the
night as well as of the day (Censorin. 100.23). Before the erection of a
clepsydra it was customary for one of the subordinate officers of the
praetor to proclaim the third, sixth, and ninth hours; which shows that the
day was, like the night, divided into four parts, each consisting of three
hours. In daily life numerous terms were in use to denote the different
parts of the day, mostly of a general and somewhat vague character. (Cf.
Varr.
L. L. 6.4-7 ; Servius on
Aen. 2.268,
3.587; Isidor.
Or. 5.31, 32.) See Dissen's treatise,
De Partibus Noctis et Diei ex Divisionibus Veterum,
in his
Kleine Lateinische und Deutsche Schriften, pp. 130,
150. Compare the article
HOROLOGIUM
All the days of the year were, according to different points of view, divided
by the Romans into different classes. For the purpose of the administration
of justice, and holding assemblies of the people, all the days were divided
into
dies fasti, dies nefasti, and
dies partly
fasti,
partly
nefasti.
in the wider sense were days on which legal and political business could
be lawfully transacted. They were divided into--
[p. 1.636]
1.
Dies fasti in the narrower sense, marked with F in the
calendars. On these legal business could be conducted (
Ov. Fast. 1.48, “fastus erit per
quem lege licebit agi ;” Varr.
L. L. 6.29,
“dies fasti per quos praetoribus omnia verba sine piaculo
licet fari” ). The word is derived by the ancients from
fari; but although the root is
undoubtedly the same, the more immediate connexion is with
fas.
2.
Dies comitiales, days on which meetings
of the people could legally be held, and on which, if there was no
meeting convened, courts could be opened. (
Macr.
1.16,
14, quoting Varro:
“Comitiales sunt, quibus cum populo agi licet, et fastis
quidem lege agi potest, cum populo non potest, comitialibus utrumque
potest.” ) These days are marked C in the calendars. The
nundinae belonged to this class, so far
as the plebeians were concerned, from the first; but in early times they
were
nefasti for the patricians, a
distinction removed in B.C. 287 by the Lex Hortensia (cf.
Becker-Marquardt, 2.3, 61). Mommsen doubts this view.
Dies nefasti were days on which no legal or
political business could be done. Varro (
L. L. 6.30)
says: “Contrarii horum(fastorum) vocantur dies nefasti, per quos
dies nefas fari praetorem ‘do, dico,
addico,’ itaque non potest agi, necesse enim aliquo eorum uti
verbo, cum lege quid peragitur.” These are again divided into
two quite distinct classes:--
1. Dies nefasti or feriati,
on which no business could be done because the day was sacred to some
festival (a
dies festus). These are
marked
 |
|
ZZZ.
|
in the calendars. This sign was commonly interpreted
nefastus parte or
nefastus principio, and was explained to
mean that the day was one during the earlier part of which no
business could be done. But Mommsen (
Chronol. p. 220;
C. I. L. i. p. 366) showed that this view was
quite untenable. It is sufficiently disproved by the fact that thus
there would be no difference between
 |
|
ZZZ.
|
and EN, and that the former sign is prefixed to all
holidays in the calendar except the
Feralia, while it is quite impossible to believe that
there was no whole holiday observed at Rome. The sign Mommsen
explains to be, like M‘ when used as an abbreviation for
Manius, a modification of the archaic M with five strokes (
 |
|
ZZZ.
|
); but there is little to support this view. Huschke
interprets it as for
Nefastus
Purus.
sometimes called
atri, marked in the
calendars by R. These were unlucky days, which had been declared to
be such by a decree of the senate in consequence of some disaster
which had taken place upon them. All the
dies
postriduani were included under this head; i. e. the
days after the calends, the nones and the ides, because these were
believed to have been specially unfortunate (
Ov. Fast. 1.59, 60, “Omen ab
eventu est: illis nam Roma diebus damna sub averso tristia Marte
tulit” ). On these days it was not only unlawful to
transact any legal or political business, but it was also unlucky to
begin any affair of importance. (Cf. Gellius,
4.9,
5 : “Religiosi dies
dicuntur tristi omine infames impeditique, in quibus et res
divinas facere et rem quampiam novam exordiri temperandum
est.” )
III. Days partly fasti and partly not,
including :
marked in the calendars by EN, for
endotercisi (
endo being an archaic
form of
in, as in
endoperator). On these days a victim was sacrificed in the
morning, and the
exta offered in the
evening. Between the sacrifice and the offering the day was
fastus; before the former and after the
latter it was
nefastus. (Varr.
L. L. 6.31;
Ov. Fast.
1.49;
Macr. 1.10,
2,
3.)
Dies fissi, three in number. To two of
these, March 24th and May 24th, are prefixed the letters Q. R. C.
F., i. e. “quando rex (sacrorum) comitiavit, fas.”
These were probably the days on which the
rex presided in the
comitia
calata for the purpose of the
testamenti factio (Mommsen,
Röm.
Staatsr. ii.2 37). These days were
even in ancient times confused with the
Regifugium, i.e. February 24th, and the letters were
wrongly interpreted
quando rex comitio
fugit. To the third, June 15th, is prefixed Q. ST. D. F.,
i.e.
quando stercus delatum fas: on
this day the temple of Vesta was solemnly cleansed by the Vestals,
and the filth carried away or thrown into the Tiber (
Ov. Fast. 6.707), no other business
being permitted on this day.
Mommsen (
C. I. L. i. p. 373) calculates that the year
contained 45
dies fasti, 194
dies comitiales, 48
dies
nefasti or
feriati, 57
dies religiosi, 8
dies intercisi, and 3
dies fissi.
Another division of the days of the year was of a purely religious
character, with which naturally the former division to a certain
extent coincided, in a city so dominated by religious scruples as
Rome:--
- (1) Dies festi, on which the
gods were honoured by (a) sacrificia, (b) epulae, (c) ludi,
(d) feriae. The feriae were of three kinds: 1,
stativae, the date of which
was fixed; 2, conceptivae, the
date of which was determined each year by the proper
officials; 3, imperativae,
special holidays, proclaimed by authority, such as supplicationes.
- (2) Dies profesti, ordinary
working-days.
- (3) Dies intercisi, of a
mixed character.
Macrobius (1.16), in describing the division of the
dies profesti, adds to the
d. fasti and
d.
comitiales, comperendini,
“quibus vadimonium licet dicere;”
stati,
“qui iudicii causa cum peregrino instituuntur;” and
proeliares,
“quibus fas est res repetere vel hostem lacessere.”
These were of little practical importance, and do not appear with
any distinguishing mark in the calendars.
For the
NUNDINAE cf. s.
v. (See Marquardt,
Röm. Alterth. vi. pp.
270-287.)
[
A.S.W]
