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[German version] I. Old Testament A religious law in the sense of a legal system existing alongside profane law or even preceding it, cannot be reconstructed for the old Israel. At the centre of recent discussions is the question of the ‘theologizing’ or the ‘Jahvism’ of the law. This refers especially to the concept occurring in Exodus (Ex 20,1 ff.: Decalogue and book of the covenant) of a God  Jehova as a lawgiver who thus functionally occupies a domain which in the Old Orient was reserved for roya…

[German version] (etymology ‘nine days’), Roman name for the market days or markets taking place every eight days (i.e. every ninth day), and thus also forming a kind of public and private measure of time. Market (II.B.); Week Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt)

[German version] A. The term Formed as an adjective from the Latin fās (‘divine right’; no etymological link with *fēs or *făs and their derivative terms fēriae, fēstus and fānum can be demonstrated [11. 134]), fastus in technical language is found only in association with dies, and in Rome then signifies those days on which certain public acts were held to be permitted. This concept gave a calendrical digest of such days ─ among which the dies fasti predominate ─ the name fasti. As regards both name and graphic form, the word displaced all other competing terms for  calenda…

Italian surname (Schulze, 355); according to Roman legend, Rome's war against Alba Longa under King Tullus Hostilius was decided through the fight between the triplet Curiatii brothers of Alba and the triplet Horatii brothers ( Horatius) of Rome, with the former being killed (Liv. 1,24f.; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3,16-20). After the destruction of Alba, the family is said to have moved to Rome and to have been included among the Patricians (Liv. 1,30,2; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3,29,7). The consul recorded in the fasti for 453 BC, member of the 1st collegium of the decemvirs for the d…

Roman family name, probably derived from Varus. Name-bearers first attested in the 1st cent. BC, but only in the Imperial period did they attain any prominence. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] V. Cotyla, L. Aedile in 48, 47 or 44 BC (Cic. Phil. 13,26), emissary at Rome for M. Antonius [I 9] in 43, and his legate in Gallia transalpina (Cic. Phil. 5,5-7; 8,24-32; Plut. Antonius 18,8). Bartels, Jens (Bonn) [German version] [I 2] V. Rufus, L. Roman poet, c. 70-15 BC Renowned Roman poet (Hor. Ars P. 55) of the Augustan period (c. 70-15 BC). Wi…

Name of an old patrician family, probably connected with the name of the god  Jupiter [1. 281; 2. 729]. The gens was one of the so-called ‘Trojan families’, who were said to have moved from Alba Longa to Rome under king Tullus Hostilius [I 4] (see below). The Iulii were prominent in the 5th and 4th cents. BC. Their connection to the family branch of the Caesares, which rose to prominence from the 3rd cent. and whose outstanding member was the dictator  Caesar (with family tree), is unclear. Caesar's adoptive son,…

A. Basic Principles [German version] 1. Term Calendar developed its modern meaning in post-antiquity from the Latin word for ‘debt register’ (  Calendarium ). In the following, the term is taken as an element of  chronography within a culture which attempts to describe or regulate annual periodicities. Typically, a day represents the smallest unit of a calendar ( Clocks). Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) [German version] 2. Social Construction of Time Hunting and farming both demand a harmonization with seasonal variations ( Seasons), thus leading to annually repeated patte…

[German version] Continuous records (  acta ) in the nature of minutes, documenting the activities of official bodies and their agents (magistrates, collegia, city councils), but also perhaps commercial enterprises, i.e. large private households (Cic. Att. 7,3,7); but the term is not attested for actual balance sheets. The interests involved, and therefore the content (down to the private ‘notebook’, Cic. De or. 1,208), level of standardization and publication of records can vary greatly. Characteristic of the commentarius, as an individual record is that it is almost a…

Name of a plebeian family [1], perhaps from Cales, politically active from the 3rd cent. BC. I. Republican period [German version] [I 1] People's tribune in the mid-2nd cent. BC People's tribune (?) in the mid-2nd cent. BC, otherwise unknown author of a lex Fufia on the fixing of permissible days for public assemblies (usually mentioned together with the lex Aelia,  Aelius [I 1]). MRR 1,452f.; 3,3f. Elvers, Karl-Ludwig (Bochum) [German version] [I 2] F., L. Rom. orator in the 1st cent. BC Known as an orator in the 90s of the 1st cent. BC. Around 97 his speech in the prosecu…

[German version] A Latin textual genre attested by numerous mediaeval MSS. Lunaria provide compilations of prescriptions and prognoses for all the days of a lunar month. In content they follow ancient astrological rules (Cato Agr.; Verg. G.; Plin. HN), but the tradition can not be reconstructed without a discontinuity [2. 18]. They correspond to the selenodromia of Greek literature, which certainly do trace back to the ancient prognostica [3; 4]. In this form the lunaria can be classified into the (mostly astrologically based) hemerological calendars, which range from…

I. Introduction [German version] A. Definition of the concept 'Religion', the substantive for describing the religious, denotes a system of common practices, individual ideas about faith, codified norms and examples of theological exegesis whose validity is derived chiefly from an authoritative principle or being. For the academic study of religion, conversely, the word is a purely heuristic category in which those practices, ideas, norms and theological constructs are examined historically; however, the…

[German version] (ἐφημερίς; ephēmerís, pl. ephēmerídes). A diary for personal notes, as office or accounts journal. The common term for such notes is   hypomnḗma(ta) , Lat.   commentarii or   acta . Ephemeris is found as the title of literary works that have been passed down or used, i.a. for the ‘war journal’ of  Alexander [4] the Great used by the historian  Ptolemy I (FGrH 117) and the fictitious Ephemerìs toû Troikoû polémou, the Trojan War diary from the (fictitious)  Dictys Cretensis. Plutarch (Caes. 22) describes Caesar's commentarii as ephemeris; however, in the  Corpus Caesa…

[German version] (ἡμερολόγιον; hēmerológion) is a text arranged according to the days of the year. The ancient spectrum of meaning ranges from  calendar (Plut. Caesar 59) to diary (Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia christiana PG 88,276A, 6th cent. AD) and is still used in the specialized Latin of the 19th cent. in this way. In modern scientific language hemerologion is used to describe two quite different objects. In Egyptology and the study of the Ancient Orient, hemerologion refers to lists with a divinatory (and as a corresponding frame of reference - cosmologic…

[German version] I. Ancient Orient In the Ancient Orient, Akkadian scribes acted as grammarians, adding Sumerian translations to Akkadian flective forms, or who provided abstract grammatical explanations for Sumerian syllables. Grammatical texts took the form of a two-columned list; there were no grammatical rules expressed in sentence form. In order to achieve congruence between the non-isomorphic languages of Sumeria and Akkadia, grammarians made up artificial Sumerian forms, neglected morpho-synta…

[German version] (ἐπίδειξις; epídeixis). One of the three   genera causarum . Aristotle determined the epideixis as the type of a speech that does not elicit the listener's judgement or decision, but simply places him into the role of spectator ( theōrós): the speech itself is what is being tested (Rh. 1358b). It is not a necessary, but a plausible consequence that the function of directing the attention towards the speech itself is supported by certain topics, that is, topics of praise or reprimand, thus giving preference to mimetic t…

[German version] Female critic of sexual moral hypocrisy in Juv. 2,36-65; if this is meant to be a historical person (thus [2]), she could be identical with the L. characterized as a rich widow in Mart. 2,32,5f. (also not definitely historical). Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt) Bibliography 1 PIR2 L 113 2 S. Morton Braund, Juvenal. Satires Book 1, 1996, 129.

[German version] (παράπηγμα; parápēgma) in ancient usage describes a peg calendar, which permitted the tracking of calendar dates (e.g. the 'Fasti Guidizzolenses' for the whole year, InscrIt 13,2,234, but probably also weekday calendars) by the (usually daily) movement of pegs. This form of calendrical orientation by means of individual pegging was particularly interesting where it permitted keeping track of calendar systems which deviated from 'civil' calendars of the time, i.e. for phases of the …

Name of an old patrician family, which was said to have immigrated to Rome under King T. Tatius with V. [I 10] (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2,46). The name, derived from the old personal name Valesus/ Valerus, was originally Valesios (cf. V. [I 7]; CIL XII p. 298g: Valesies; Fest. 22; Varro, Rerum divinarum fr. 66 Cardauns [4; 5]); the censor App. Claudius [I 2] introduced the new spelling in 312 BC (cf. Dig. 1,2, 2,36). Because in Antiquity the name was derived (etymologically correctly) from valere, 'to be strong', it was considered to be a good omen ( boni ominis nomen, Cic. Div. 1,102; Cic. Sca…