By Water & Blood

Book I: Midwinter New Year and Janus (Excerpts)

Latin: Ovid, Fasti I (public domain). English: study draft for this site (not Riley’s 1851 prose and not the copyrighted Loeb/Frazer). Full Riley prose import of Books I–VI remains optional later.

Study English from the Latin of Fasti Book I (public-domain text). Focused on the opening of the year and why Rome begins the calendar in midwinter—material that sits beside Saturnalia / Natalis Invicti for Holydaze.

The times arranged through the Latin year, with their causes—and what stars set beneath the earth and rise—I shall sing. Germanicus Caesar, receive this work with kindly face, and guide the course of my timid bark.

Others may sing of Caesar’s arms; I shall sing of Caesar’s altars, and of the days he has added to the festivals.

When the city’s founder marked the periods, he appointed twice five months for his year. In truth, Romulus, you knew arms better than the stars, and your greater care was to conquer your neighbors. Yet there is a reason that may have moved him: that span which is enough for the infant to come forth from the mother’s womb, he judged enough for a year.

Janus himself appears and is asked why the new year begins in the cold, not in spring. He answers that the midwinter turning is when the sun renews his course—the year begins when light begins again to lengthen after the shortest day.

On the Kalends of January, holy words are to be spoken first, and gifts are exchanged at the year’s beginning—a custom Janus explains as omen and good will for the months to come.

Note: Ovid’s Fasti covers January through June only; December’s Saturnalia is treated in Lucian and Macrobius on this shelf. Book I’s midwinter New Year and Janus material is the piece that most directly serves the solstice–calendar argument.