CURIA CALABRA
a hall of assembly on the Capitoline hill, where, before
the publication of the calendar, on the Kalends of each month the
pontifex minor made a public announcement of the day on which the
Nones would fall (Varro,
LL vi. 27; Serv.
Aen. viii. 654; Macrob.
Sat.
i. 15. 10; Hemerol. Praen. ad kal. Ian.; CIL i. p. 231). The name was
derived from
calare (locc. citt.; Varro,
LL v. 13), both because the pontifex
called the people together (comitia calata), and because he called out the
day of the Nones. As curia was regularly used in early times for halls
where the representatives of the curiae, or the senate, assembled, it
seems probable that originally this curia bore the same relation to the
senate and comitia Calata that the curia Hostilia did to the senate and
comitia Curiata (Mommsen,
Staatsrecht iii. 868, 914, 927; cf.
Liv.
xli. 27. 7). Festus (49) says that in the
curia Calabra tantum ratio
sacrorum gerebatur, and Macrobius (
Sat. i. 15. 19) that the pontifex
minor sacrificed here to Juno on the Kalends of each month. It was
near the casa Romuli (Macrob.
Sat. i. 15. 10), and appears in Lydus
(
Mens. iii. 10) as
Καλαβρὰ βασιλική (
Jord. i. 2. 51;
RE iv. 1821;
Thes. Ling. Lat. s.v. Calabra).
