''Ab urbe condita'' ( 'from the
founding of the City'), or ''anno urbis conditae'' (; 'in the year since the city's founding'), abbreviated as AUC or AVC, expresses a date in years since
753 BC, the traditional founding of Rome. It is an expression used in antiquity and by
classical historians to refer to a given year in
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...
. In reference to the traditional year of the foundation of Rome, the year
1 BC
Year 1 BC was a common year starting on Friday or Saturday in the Julian calendar (the sources differ; see leap year error for further information) and a leap year starting on Thursday in the proleptic Julian calendar. It was also a leap year s ...
would be written AUC 753, whereas
AD 1 would be AUC 754. The foundation of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...
in
27 BC would be AUC 727.
Usage of the term was more common during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
, when editors sometimes added AUC to Roman manuscripts they published, giving the false impression that the convention was commonly used in antiquity. In reality, the dominant method of identifying years in Roman times was to name the two
consul
Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throu ...
s who held office that year. In late antiquity,
regnal years were also in use, as in
Roman Egypt during the
Diocletian era after
AD 293, and in the
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
from AD 537, following a decree by
Justinian
Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565.
His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized '' renova ...
.
Significance
The traditional date for the
founding of Rome, 21 April 753 BC, is due to
Marcus Terentius Varro (
1st century BC). Varro may have used the consular list (with its mistakes) and called the year of the first consuls "''ab Urbe condita'' 245," accepting the 244-year interval from
Dionysius of Halicarnassus for the kings after the foundation of Rome. The correctness of this calculation has not been confirmed, but it is still used worldwide.
From the time of
Claudius (
fl.
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
AD 41 to AD 54) onward, this calculation superseded other contemporary calculations. Celebrating the anniversary of the city became part of imperial
propaganda. Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honor of the anniversary of the city, in AD 48, the eight hundredth year from the founding of the city.
Hadrian, in AD 121, and
Antoninus Pius, in AD 147 and AD 148, held similar celebrations respectively.
In AD 248,
Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's first
millennium
A millennium (plural millennia or millenniums) is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloannus, kiloannum (ka), or kiloyear (ky). Normally, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting ...
, together with
Ludi saeculares for Rome's alleged tenth
saeculum. Coins from his reign commemorate the celebrations. A coin by a contender for the imperial throne,
Pacatianus
Pacatian (; la, Tiberius Claudius Marinus Pacatianus; died ''c.'' 248) was a usurper in the Danube area of the Roman Empire during the time of Philip the Arab.
He is known from coins, and from mentions in Zosimus and Zonaras, who say that he ...
, explicitly states "
ar one thousand and first," which is an indication that the citizens of the empire had a sense of the beginning of a new era, a ''Sæculum Novum''.
Calendar era
The
Anno Domini
The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord" ...
(AD) year numbering was developed by a monk named
Dionysius Exiguus
Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for "Dionysius the Humble", Greek: Διονύσιος; – ) was a 6th-century Eastern Roman monk born in Scythia Minor. He was a member of a community of Scythian monks concentrated in Tomis (present day Constanța ...
in Rome in AD 525, as a result of his work on calculating the date of Easter. Dionysius did not use the AUC convention, but instead based his calculations on the
Diocletian era. This convention had been in use since AD 293, the year of the
tetrarchy, as it became impractical to use regnal years of the current emperor. In his Easter table, the year AD 532 was equated with the 248th
regnal year
A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin ''regnum'' meaning kingdom, rule. Regnal years considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year ...
of
Diocletian. The table counted the years starting from the presumed birth of Christ, rather than the accession of the emperor
Diocletian on 20 November AD 284 or, as stated by Dionysius: ''"sed magis elegimus ab incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi annorum tempora praenotare"'' ("but rather we choose to name the times of the years from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ"). Blackburn and Holford-Strevens review interpretations of Dionysius which place the
Incarnation
Incarnation literally means ''embodied in flesh'' or ''taking on flesh''. It refers to the conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or the appearance of a god as a human. If capitalized, it is the union of divinit ...
in 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1.
[Blackburn, B. & Holford-Strevens, L, ''The Oxford Companion to the Year'' (Oxford University Press, 2003 corrected reprinting, originally 1999), pp. 778–780.]
The year AD 1 corresponds to AUC 754, based on the epoch of
Varro. Thus:
See also
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Calendar era
A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one '' epoch'' of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Coptic ...
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History of Italy
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List of Latin phrases
__NOTOC__
This is a list of Wikipedia articles of Latin phrases and their translation into English.
''To view all phrases on a single, lengthy document, see: List of Latin phrases (full)''
The list also is divided alphabetically into twenty pag ...
*
Roman calendar
The Roman calendar was the calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic. The term often includes the Julian calendar established by the reforms of the dictator Julius Caesar and emperor Augustus in the late 1stcenturyBC and some ...
Notes
Citations
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:ab urbe condita
1st-century BC establishments in the Roman Empire
8th century BC in the Roman Kingdom
Calendar eras
Chronology
Latin words and phrases
Roman calendar
Diocletian