January, Special Festivals, Anniversaries, etc.

All calendars exist to not only indicate time sequences in days, weeks, months, and years; but also to indicate special religious holidays (holy days), anniversaries of historical significance, birthdays, festivals, and other information considered significant to users. This particular page is set up to provide dates that were important to Romans so we can have an historical perspective about the calendar that serves as the basis for our modern-day organization of dates.

The “new” Julian calendar, introduced in Ianuary, A.U.C. 708 (45 B.C.), was based on calculations of the phases of the moon and seasonal movements in conjunction with the sun as determined by the Greek astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, Egypt.


• At the time of Julius Caesar, Ianuarius had 29 days, but he changed this to 31.
• As the first month in the Gregorian, or New Style calendar, January still consists of 31 days.
• Juno is the deity for the first day of each month representing the day of the new moon.
• January 3, Cicero, Roman emperor, was born in A.U.C. 648 (106.B.C.).
• Julius Caesar chased Pompey into Greece, A.U.C. 706 (48 B.C.).
• Marriages were considered inauspicious during all Calends, Nones, and Ides of every month.
• On January 12, Roman slaves celebrated the Compitalia, from A.U.C. 178 (576 B.C.) onward, when some would reverse their roles and pretend to be masters.
• The Ides of January was dedicated to Jupiter.
• When Numa Pompilius became king of Rome c. A.U.C. 39 (715 B.C.), he is credited with reforming the calendar, adding Ianuarius (29 days) and Februarilus (28 days) to the end of the year.
• January 22 was the day of the Catagogia, first century A.D. onward, when there was an erotic and bacchanalian festival.
• In his priestly role as pontifex maximus, Julius Caesar had authority over the calendar and festivals. He decreed a massive reform of the calendar Romans had lived by for centuries, but which had fallen far out of step with the solar year.

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense and the past perfect.

-The United Church Observer

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