Calendar

The Roman calendar is incredibly complicated for a layman like me. Mostly because the calendar did not always stay the same and was adapted again and again over time. It was complicated above all because the Romans had to determine the time of the market days. In some cases, the market days had to be brought forward because an important festival was coming up, which resulted in further adjustments in the coming weeks and months. After some reforms, Julius Caesar adapted the calendar system almost in the same way as we use it today in the western world. There is an exciting video “The Longest Year in Human History” [YouTube link click here]. Before Caesar reformed the calendar system, December was the 10th month and e.g. October the 8th month. The weeks were not always the same length and there were leap days. Incredibly complicated.

If you watched the HBO series ROM, you noticed that occasionally someone tampered with a huge calendar (e.g. in season 1 episode 2 – 23:20). Although this calendar had never really existed exactly like this, I thought that such a calendar belongs in every city. I tried to imitate this building of the series as much as possible without being too close to the original to not risk copyright infringement. The building can be visited in the Cinecittà film studios near Rome [Google Maps Link].

Benefits

However, the calendar will not only serve as a decorative element in the game: If you have not built a calendar on the forum, you will not know which week is coming up. But this is fundamental to know because in the winter months little or no food is produced and the stores have to be filled until autumn. Therefore, it makes sense to have the calendar built on the forum as soon as possible to always know the current month.