What is the reason that not all roman emperors named a month after them?
Upvote:7
Despite Lives of the Twelve Caesars there were far more emperors than months to name after them.
it is not certain to me that Gaius Julius Caesar and Augustus ordered months named after themselves. It is possible that those honors ere decreed posthumously by the senate (allegedly without being prodded by the heir) - you should look it up. The senate was only likely to name a month after an emperor they liked, usually when posthumously decreeing him a god. If an emperor just arbitrarily named a month after himself without going though the senate the next reign might have that action reversed to gain favor with the senate.
A lot of unpopular emperors were posthumously punished with Damnato Memoria when their decrees were nullified and all inscriptions and monuments honoring them were erased and destroyed. If that was done, nothing, especially part of the calendar, would be left named after that emperor.
Curiously, the ins and out of imperial politics meant that the list of Emperors decreed to be gods, likely to have months named after them, and the list of emperors punished with Damnato Memoria and having everything named after them renamed, largely overlapped and did include some of the same emperors.
And the renaming of months seems more like a custom of the early empire and Commodus was probably the last emperor to rename a month after himself.
And after the Emperors became Christians in the 4th century AD they stopped being decreed gods after death and that probably made it very unlikely that months would be renamed after them.
Upvote:14
Actually several did:
Caligula renamed September to Germanicus (Suetonius, Caligula, 15) in memory of his father.
Nero renamed April to Neronium (Suetonius, Nero, 55).
Upvote:25
Suetonius has this to report about Tiberius, the second emperor and the third Caesar:
[H]e at first played a most unassuming part, almost humbler than that of a private citizen. Of many high honours he accepted only a few of the more modest. He barely consented to allow his birthday, which came at the time of the Plebeian games in the Circus, to be recognized by the addition of a single two-horse chariot. He forbade the voting of temples, flamens, and priests in his honour, and even the setting up of statues and busts without his permission; and this he gave only with the understanding that they were not to be placed among the likenesses of the gods, but among the adornments of the temples. (2) He would not allow an oath to be taken ratifying his acts, nor the name Tiberius to be given to the month of September, or that of Livia to October.
This seems to have stopped the renaming of months fad.
More post
- 📝 How can we be certain of customs in the primitive age?
- 📝 What happened to all the notable Roman families?
- 📝 What kind of cloth did Genghis Khan use in his armor?
- 📝 How were precise hand drawn illustrations copied between the 16th and 20th century in Europe?
- 📝 How did a besieged city/castle defend itself vs. catapulting diseased dead bodies into it?
- 📝 How common are historical instances of mercenary armies reversing and attacking their employing country?
- 📝 Why did Churchill accept the Order of the Garter in 1953?
- 📝 What races are being depicted in this American WWII cartoon?
- 📝 Why were universities created in the 11th-12th century?
- 📝 What percentage of the German population worked on gathering the harvest in 1917?
- 📝 Prominent examples of scientific racism in ancient Greece
- 📝 Where did prejudice against left-handed people originate from?
- 📝 Who turned the (originally) "anti-slavery" GOP into the "pro-business" party?
- 📝 History of the Changes and Developments in Types of Urban Renewal Projects
- 📝 Ancient and medieval canteens (water-bottles)
- 📝 How exactly did the government work with very large empires?
- 📝 First eastbound transcontinental flight departed from...?
- 📝 Were there any potential areas around Smolensk that Army Group Center might have found as defensible as the Rzhev line?
- 📝 How is the year "753 BC" given in ancient legends about the founding of Rome?
- 📝 Why did the Irish Free State suppress news of the Holocaust in 1945? Reaction once it became known?
- 📝 How would a strength report be collected from a brigade?
- 📝 Why were all Y-12 operators of Manhattan Project women?
- 📝 How long did it take to get news of the sighting of the Spanish Armada from Land’s End to London?
- 📝 Can anybody identify the cap-badge and/or uniform in this image?
- 📝 Was Tibet ruled by Yuan Dynasty empires?
- 📝 What mysterious Flemish peasant activity is depicted in this painting?
- 📝 Was Colonel Thomas Butler actually arrested?
- 📝 What was the first known war in history?
- 📝 Why did Chinese use high tin bronze for swords?
- 📝 Which British town or city is recorded in this 1890's YouTube video?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What is the reason that not all roman emperors named a month after them?
- 📝 What was the largest place to be named after a specific, individual animal (i.e. not a species)?
- 📝 What was the first major technological advancement that occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 What were the reasons that the British colonies in North America rebelled but not others?
- 📝 What happened to all the nuclear material being smuggled after the fall of the USSR?
- 📝 When was it discovered that the stars are not all lying on the same plane?
- 📝 What happened to all the notable Roman families?
- 📝 What was the northernmost region/city in the Roman Empire that spoke Greek as the native language?
- 📝 What was the reason for inflation in Britain after the Black Death?
- 📝 After World War II, what happened to the Soviet industrial facilities that had been evacuated?
- 📝 Is this true that the requirement to sacrifice to the Roman gods was put in by the Caesar only after Christianity emerged?
- 📝 What did Sweden do with all the wrong-sided steering wheels after Högertrafikomläggningen?
- 📝 What was the reason that Poland wanted a part of Germany north of Stettin/Szczecin and west of the Oder?
- 📝 What Was the Political Condition of the Region that Encompasses the Modern Russian State in the time of the Roman empire?
- 📝 Do busts or statues exist for all the Roman emperors until the fall of the West?
- 📝 What do we know about the squadron that evacuated Moore's force after Corunna?
- 📝 What was the official reason for not invading France until the middle of 1944?
- 📝 Were the names of the 10 months in the ancient Roman Calendar originally named after ordinal numbers?
- 📝 What is the reason of Mongol Empire success conquering that huge territory?
- 📝 What was the primary reason for the rise and success of the Roman republic / empire?
- 📝 What is the reason that European Democracies developed without judicial independence?
- 📝 What was that book that listed all the rich/influential people and defined socioeconomic status for many Americans?
- 📝 How has it happen, that Soviet Union, after the win in WW2 did not took German technologies?
- 📝 What was the biggest region in the Holy Roman Empire that was never Protestant, if any?
- 📝 What happened to cities in the Western Roman empire after the fall of Rome?
- 📝 What is the primary source evidence for the theory that the African Ancient Egyptians are not black Africans whose origin is sub-Saharan Africa?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 Why is the consensus that WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and not July 7, 1937?
- 📝 Why did the Western Roman Empire collapse but not the Eastern Roman Empire?