By Water & Blood

Book 1, Chapter 3: When the Civil Day Begins

Then Caecina: "Since for you who draw me into this conversation nothing of all that the ancients have worked out is either denied by ignorance or withdrawn by forgetfulness, I see it superfluous to bring forward known things among those who know. But lest anyone think that I am weighed down by the dignity of being consulted, whatever my thin memory suggests to me on this I will briefly review."

After this, when he had seen all ready and intent to hear, he began thus: "M. Varro in the book of Human Affairs which he wrote about days says: 'Men who are born from midnight to the next midnight in these twenty-four hours are said to be born on one day.' By which words he seems so to have divided the observation of days that one who is born after sunset before midnight seems born on that day which the night has followed; but on the contrary, one who is born in the six later hours of the night seems born on that day which has grown light after that night. But that the Athenians observe otherwise the same Varro wrote in the same book, and says that they call all that intervening time from sunset to the sun setting again one day; the Babylonians again otherwise—for from the risen sun to the beginning of its rising they name that space by the name of one day; but the Umbrians say that one and the same day is from midday to the following midday. 'Which indeed,' says Varro, 'is excessively absurd. For one who is born among the Umbrians on the Kalends at the sixth hour, his birthday will have to seem both the halved day of the Kalends and that which will be after the Kalends up to the sixth hour of that day.'

"But that the Roman people count each day from midnight to the next midnight, as Varro said, is shown by many arguments. For Roman rites are partly diurnal, others nocturnal, and for those that are diurnal, from the sixth hour of the following night time is devoted to the nocturnal rites. To this the rite also and custom of taking auspices teach that the observation is the same. For magistrates, when on one day they must both take the auspices and do that concerning which the auspice has preceded, take the auspices after midnight and act after sunrise, and are said both to have taken the auspices and to have acted on the same day. Besides, the tribunes of the plebs, whom it is not lawful to be absent from Rome for any whole day, when they set out after midnight and return after the first torch before the following midnight, are not seen to have been absent a day, since having returned before the sixth hour of the night they spend some part of that day in the city.

"I have also read that Quintus Mucius the jurisconsult used to say that a woman had not been 'usurped' who, when she had begun to be with her husband for the sake of marriage on the Kalends of January, had gone for the usurpation on the fourth day before the following Kalends of January: for the three nights could not be fulfilled during which, according to the Twelve Tables, she ought to be absent from her husband for the sake of usurpation, since the later six hours of the third night belonged to another year, which began from the Kalends.

"Vergil also shows this very thing, as became a man dealing with poetic matters, by a recondite and covered signification of ancient rite. 'Damp night,' he says, 'wheels her mid course, and the fierce rising has breathed on me with panting horses.' For by these words he warns that the day which the Romans called civil arises from the sixth hour of the night. The same poet expressed when night also begins, in the sixth book. For when he had said, 'By this exchange of speeches Dawn with rosy chariot had already crossed mid heaven in her ethereal course,' presently the seer added, 'Night rushes down, Aeneas: we draw out the hours in weeping.' Thus most observant of civil definitions he described the beginnings of day and night.

"Which day is thus divided: the first time of the day is called the turning of midnight; then cockcrow (gallicinium); then the hush (conticinium), when both the cocks fall silent and men are still quiet; then dawn (diluculum), that is when day begins to be distinguished; then morning (mane), when day is clear. But mane is so called either because from the lower places—that is from the Manes—the beginning of light emerges, or—what seems truer to me—from the omen of a good name. For the people of Lanuvium also say mane for good, just as among us too the contrary is immane, as an immanis beast or an immane crime and the rest of this kind, for 'not good.' Then from morning to midday, that is to the middle of the day; then thereafter the declining time (occiduum) is spoken of, and presently the latest season (suprema tempestas), that is the newest time of the day, as it is expressed in the Twelve Tables: 'Let sunset be the latest season.' Then evening (vespera), which is drawn from the Greeks: for they call hespera (ἑσπέρα) from the star Hesperus, whence also Italy is named Hesperia because it lies under the setting. From this time the first torch is spoken of, then bedtime (concubia), and then the untimely hour (intempesta), which has no suitable time for doing business. This is the division of the civil day observed by the Romans. Therefore when the coming night has begun to be in the middle, there will be the auspice of the Saturnalia, for which our custom is to begin tomorrow."