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The Fasti (Latin: Fāstī [ˈfaːstiː], [2] "the Calendar"), sometimes translated as The Book of Days or On the Roman Calendar, is a six-book Latin poem written by the Roman poet Ovid and made public in AD 8. Ovid is believed to have left the Fasti incomplete when he was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in 8 AD.
This list was the origin of the public Roman calendar, in which the days were divided into weeks of eight days each, and indicated by the letters A–H. Each day was marked by a certain letter to show its nature; thus the letters F., N., N.P., F.P., Q. Rex C.F., C., EN., stood for fastus , nefastus , nefastus in some unexplained sense, fastus ...
The calends was a feature of the Roman calendar, but it was not included in the Greek calendar.Consequently, to postpone something ad Kalendas Graecas ("until the Greek calends") was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever.
Ovid's Fasti is a lengthy elegiac poem on the first six months of the Roman calendar. The Romans adopted the Alexandrine habit of concealing the name of their beloved in the poem with a pseudonym. Catullus' Lesbia is notorious as the pseudonym of Clodia. But as the form developed, this habit becomes more artificial; Tibullus' Delia and ...
In the final poem Ovid apologizes for the quality and tone of his book, a sentiment echoed throughout the collection. Book 2 consists of one long poem in which Ovid defends himself and his poetry, uses precedents to justify his work, and begs the emperor for forgiveness. Book 3 has 14 poems focusing on Ovid's life in Tomis.
A fragment of the Fasti Praenestini for the month of Aprilis, showing its nundinal letters on the left side The full remains of the Fasti Praenestini. The nundinae (/ n ə n ˈ d ɪ n aɪ /, /-n iː /), sometimes anglicized to nundines, [1] were the market days of the ancient Roman calendar, forming a kind of weekend including, for a certain period, rest from work for the ruling class ().
The Fasti, a didactic poem about the Roman calendar by Ovid, has, in the words of classicist Alessandro Barchiesi, "the strongest claim to be a full-scale imitation of the Aetia". [24] However, not all Roman commentators held favourable views of the work: the epigrammatist Martial dedicated a poem (10.4) to the sentiment that the Aetia , with ...
In writing about the Festival of Vesta in his poem on the Roman calendar, Ovid recalls a time when the forum was still a reedy swamp and "that god, Vertumnus, whose name fits many forms, / Wasn’t yet so-called from damming back the river" (averso amne). [5] Varro was convinced that Vortumnus was Etruscan, and a major god. [6]