Menologia rustica

Ancient Roman farmers' almanacs (in Latin, menologia rustica) are a type of Roman calendar providing month-by-month information on conditions and activities pertaining to agriculture. They were displayed as public inscriptions. Examples that survived to the modern era are the Menologium Rusticum Colotianum and the Menologium Rusticum Vallense, both dating to the period 19–65 AD^[1] or 36–39 to the end of the 1st century AD.^[2] Both were discovered in the 16th century, but the Menologium Valense has been lost.^[3]

Description

The Menologium Rusticum Colotianum was discovered by Angelo Colocci, and is held by the Naples Museum.^[4] It appears on a four-sided marble altar base, inscribed in twelve columns. Each column contains:

• a zodiac sign
• month name
• number of days in the month
• date of the Nones
• number of daylight and nighttime hours
• astrological house through which the sun passed
• tutelary deity of the month
• agricultural tasks
• religious holidays that a farmer was expected to observe.^[5]

Villas on working estates often displayed mosaics and wall painting depicting seasonal or monthly agricultural activities, in some sense illustrations of the menologia rustica.^[6]

Van L. Johnson conjectured that the four-sided form of the menologia preserved an original four-month Roman "year" or festival cycle.^[7]

Text

• Attilio Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae 13: fasti et elogia. Fasciculus 2: Fasti anni Numani et Iuliani, accedunt ferialia, menologia rustica, parapegmata (Rome: Libreria delle Stato, 1963).

See also

• Roman festivals
• Farmers' Almanac
• Old Farmer's Almanac

References

1. Michele Renee Salzman, On Roman Time: The Codex Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 1990), p. 170.
2. Joseph Patrich, Studies in the Archaeology and History of Caesarea Maritima (Brill, 2011), p. 84, note 53.
3. John Edwin Sandys, Latin Epigraphy: An Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions (Cambridge University Press, 1919), p. 174.
4. Sandys, Latin Epigraphy, p. 174.
5. James Chidester Egbert, Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions (New York, 1896), p. 368.
6. Annalisa Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History (Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 297.
7. Van L. Johnson, "Natalis Urbis and Principium anni," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 (1960), p. 110.