Fasti
In ancient Rome, the fasti (Latin plural) were chronological or calendar-based lists, or other diachronic records or plans of official and religiously sanctioned events.
After Rome's decline, the word fasti continued to be used for similar records in Christian Europe and later Western culture.
Fasti Magistrales, Annales or Historici, were concerned with the several festivals, and everything relating to religious practice and the gods, and the magistrates; to the emperors, their birthdays, offices, days consecrated to them, with feasts and ceremonies established in their honor or for their prosperity.
They came to be denominated magni, "great", by way of distinction from the bare calendar, or fasti diurni ("everyday records").
An example is the fasti Capitolini, a modern name assigned because they were deposited in 1547 in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill on order of Alessandro Farnese, who kept them temporarily in his villa after their excavation from the Roman forum in 1545 or 1546 (funded by Farnese).
The restoration was based nearly entirely on the observations of Onofrio Panvinio and Pirro Ligorio, who were standing at the top of the trench in which a portion of wall was showing, featuring inscriptional material between pilasters.
Pope Paul III had authorized the mining of stone for St. Peter's in 1540 and Michelangelo was in fact protestingly working on its design also.
Collecting a team they moved swiftly to rescue what they could, sinking tunnels to the side to search for fragments.
[5] It has been estimated that the consular lists were in four entablatures several feet high: I covering AUC 1-364; II, 365-461; III, 462-600; IV, 601-745, running to 766 in the margin.
There were in fact two different original lists placed under that name to which were added fragments found in 1816-1818, 1872–1878 and a final one from the Tiber river in 1888, unrestored.
The two theories are that they were in or part of the regia, or palace, of the College of Pontiffs, or that they were on a commemorative arch Augustus had constructed.
[9] The republican dates given to the right are those of the Varronian chronology; that is, those calculated by the scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro.
Many other dates and chronologies existed, notably those of Livy, with which the emperor must have been familiar, but he did not forbid their use in unofficial contexts.
[11] The Fasti Triumphales contained a list in chronological order of persons who had obtained a triumph, together with the name of the conquered people.
The acta triumphorum were on four panels, I covering AUC 1-452; II, 453-532; III, 533-625 and IV, 628-735, ending in 19 BC.
The Fasti Potentini is a list of consuls from Potentia in Lucania, and probably dating to the early second century.
[citation needed] Fasti Diurni, divided into urbani and rustici, were a kind of official year-book, with dates and directions for religious ceremonies, court-days, market-days, divisions of the month, and the like.
Until 304 BC the lore of the calendaria remained the exclusive and lucrative monopoly of the priesthood; but in that year Gnaeus Flavius, a pontifical secretary, introduced the custom of publishing in the forum tables containing the requisite information, besides brief references to victories, triumphs, prodigies, etc.
Upon the cultivators fewer feasts, sacrifices, ceremonies and holidays were enjoined than on the inhabitants of cities; and the rustic fasti contained little more than the ceremonies of the calends, nones and ides, the fairs, signs of zodiac, increase and decrease of the days, the tutelary gods of each month, and certain directions for rustic labours to be performed each month.
The Praenestine calendar (Fasti praenestini), discovered in 1770, arranged by the famous grammarian Verrius Flaccus, contains the months of January, March, April, and December, and a portion of February.
The HBO television series Rome features a pontiff calling out the fasti in the Forum at the beginning of each episode.
