Varronian chronology

[1] The chronology consists of an ordered list of magisterial colleges (eg pairs of consuls) which, in modern times, are regularly assigned to years BC.

Dates were instead kept in reference to a certain year's consuls: eg that an event occurred during the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius Hybrida (63 BC).

[8] Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in their respective works – Ab urbe condita and Roman Antiquities – used separate schemes which place the same consuls in different years.

[9] The ancient Roman historians, writing centuries after the events they purport to describe, were themselves unclear about the order or identities of some magisterial years.

Livy records an eclipse during the consulship of Gaius Marcius Rutilus and Titus Manlius Torquatus which corresponds to the Varronian year 344 BC.

[19] The Varronian chronology, somewhat confusingly given its name, was first published by the Roman antiquarian Titus Pomponius Atticus in his Liber Annalis in 47 BC.

[25] The traditional view among scholars is that these early sources relied on the annales maximi, an annual chronicle kept by the pontifex maximus, which listed all the republican magistrates as well as various events.

They instead suggest that the original sources themselves were fragmentary and incomplete, casting substantial doubt on the historicity of the various chronologies (whether Varronian or not) that survive to modern times.

[32] Since Roman records had only preserved enough consular colleges to place the Gallic sack in 381 BC, the early compilers of the fasti seemingly invented five years of anarchy to align that event with the Greek-derived date of 386.

[35] Removing both the dictator and anarchy years would yield a chronology similar to that of Livy, which reports the foundation of the republic c. 501 BC,[36] although doubts have been expressed about the reliability of the earlier reaches of the consular fasti.

[38] The second portion is merely a calculation assuming that the city was founded seven generations – corresponding to the seven canonical kings of Rome – of 35 years earlier.

[40] T R S Broughton, in the Magistrates of the Roman republic, on examination of the "dictator years" instead put forward the Livian chronology as an alternative.

Detail from the fasti Capitolini , which (with a few deviations) employed the Varronian chronological scheme
The pontifex maximus ' official house was the Regia (ruins thereof pictured). The primary source for the Roman histories and their chronologies, the annales maximi , were kept within. [ 20 ]
Modern bust of Cleisthenes . He is credited with the establishment of Athenian democracy in 509 BC. [ 21 ] Roman historians synchronised this year with the foundation of their republic.