THE BATTLE OF RUSPINA, J. CAESAR VERSUS T. LABIENUS

It's been an unusually cold winter in Barcelona, ​​so much so that I don't feel like going out to enjoy the city.

The forecast for this week is for more cold and rain and The Grandma has decided to light the fireplace and sit on the sofa doing nothing and resting while reading about the Battle of Ruspina, a historical event that happened on a day like today in the year 46 BC.

The Battle of Ruspina was fought on 4 January 46 BC in the Roman province of Africa, between the Republican forces of the Optimates and forces loyal to Julius Caesar. The Republican army was commanded by Titus Labienus, Caesar's former lieutenant during the Gallic Wars who had defected to the Republican side at the beginning of the civil war.

Julius Caesar entered Lilybaeum in Sicily on 17 December 47 BC and assembled an army there to defeat the Optimates in Africa. He set sail on 25 December, but his limited intelligence about a proper landing site and winds scattered his fleet. He had six legions and 2,000 cavalry but only the bare necessity of supplies due to a lack of shipping.

Caesar landed near Hadrumentum with 3,500 legionaries and 150 cavalry. The city's garrison refused to surrender and Caesar set up camp at Ruspina. On 1 January 46 BC, he arrived at Leptis where he was reinforced by some of his scattered troops (elements of fifth and the tenth legions). The next day several more reinforcements arrived at Ruspina. He left six cohorts to hold Leptis and marched back to Ruspina. 

On 4 January, Caesar went off on a foraging mission, initially with thirty cohorts. The Optimates were near and Caesar sent for his 400 cavalry and 150 archers as well. He then conducted a reconnaissance.

Titus Labienus commanded the Optimate force, which included many infantrymen, 8,000 Numidian cavalry and 1,600 Gallic and Germanic cavalry. Caesar deployed his army in one line to prevent envelopment, with his archers up front and the cavalry on the wings. Labienus's cavalry pushed back Caesar's cavalry and surrounded the Caesarian army. In the center, the Numidian light infantry launched projectiles at the Caesarian legionaries, staying out of the Caesarians's reach.

Caesar's legions redeployed into a circle to face attacks from all sides. The Numidian light infantry bombarded the legionaries with missiles. Caesar's legionaries threw their pila at the enemy in return, but were ineffective.

Titus Labienus rode up to the front rank of Caesar's troops, coming very near in order to taunt the enemy troops. A veteran of the Tenth Legion approached Labienus, who recognized him. The veteran threw his pilum at Labienus's horse, wounding it. That'll teach you Labienus, that a soldier of the Tenth is attacking you, the veteran growled, shaming Labienus in front of his own men. Some men however began to panic. An aquilifer attempted to flee but Caesar grabbed the man, spun him around and shouted the enemy are over there!

Caesar broadened the length of his line and made every other cohort turn around, so the standards would be facing the Numidian cavalry in the Romans' rear and the other cohorts the Numidian light infantry to the front. The legionaries charged and threw their pila, scattering the Optimates infantry and cavalry. They pursued their enemy for a short distance, and then began to march back to camp. However Marcus Petreius and Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso appeared with 1,600 Numidian cavalry and a large number of light infantry who harassed Caesar's legionaries as they retreated. Caesar readied his army for combat and drove the Optimates forces back. Petreius was wounded at this point. Exhausted, Caesar moved back to camp.

Caesar had failed in his initial goal of gaining supplies for his army. However, his army remained intact; Caesar fortified his camp at Ruspina and made light infantrymen out of his sailors. His craftsmen produced projectiles and Caesar sent messages to bring up grain and other supplies. Metellus Scipio joined forces with Labienus and Petreius and they set up camp three miles from Caesar's.

More information: INISEG

Fortune, which has a great deal of power 
in other matters but especially in war, 
can bring about great changes in a situation 
through very slight forces.

Julius Caesar

JULIAN CALENDAR, PREDOMINANT FROM 45 BC TO 1582

An old year has passed away and a new tear has just arrived, and The Grandma has been reading about the Julian calendar to commemorate this January, 1.

The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar.

It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandria.

The calendar became the predominant calendar in the Roman Empire and subsequently most of the Western world for more than 1,600 years until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated a minor modification to reduce the average length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and thus corrected the Julian calendar's drift against the solar year.

Worldwide adoption of this revised calendar, which became known as the Gregorian calendar, took place over the subsequent centuries, first in Catholic countries and subsequently in Protestant countries of the Western Christian world.

The Julian calendar is still used in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in parts of Oriental Orthodoxy as well as by the Berbers.

The Julian calendar has two types of years: a normal year of 365 days and a leap year of 366 days. They follow a simple cycle of three normal years and one leap year, giving an average year that is 365.25 days long. That is more than the actual solar year value of 365.24219 days (the current value, which varies), which means the Julian calendar gains a day every 128 years.

For any given event during the years from 1901 to 2099 inclusive, its date according to the Julian calendar is 13 days behind its corresponding Gregorian date.

More information: Time and Date

The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, for a total of 355 days. In addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. This intercalary month was formed by inserting 22 or 23 days after the first 23 days of February; the last five days of February, which counted down toward the start of March, became the last five days of Intercalaris. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, forming an intercalary year of 377 or 378 days. Some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia (23 February).

According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. In this system, the average Roman year would have had 366+1⁄4 days over four years, giving it an average drift of one day per year relative to any solstice or equinox.

Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one eight-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days (thus 11 intercalary years out of 24). This refinement averages the length of the year to 365.25 days over 24 years.

In practice, intercalations did not occur systematically according to any of these ideal systems, but were determined by the pontifices. So far as can be determined from the historical evidence, they were much less regular than these ideal schemes suggest. They usually occurred every second or third year, but were sometimes omitted for much longer, and occasionally occurred in two consecutive years.

The Roman calendar began the year on 1 January, and this remained the start of the year after the Julian reform. However, even after local calendars were aligned to the Julian calendar, they started the new year on different dates.

The Julian calendar has been replaced as the civil calendar by the Gregorian calendar in all countries which officially used it. Turkey switched (for fiscal purposes) on 16 February/1 March 1917.

Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918. Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923, but the national day (25 March), was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have made the change to Gregorian for their liturgical calendars to align with the civil calendar.

A calendar similar to the Julian one, the Alexandrian calendar, is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, which is still the civil calendar of Ethiopia. Egypt converted from the Alexandrian calendar to Gregorian on 1 Thaut 1592/11 September 1875.

During the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as modern texts that describe events during the period of change, it is customary to clarify to which calendar a given date refers by using an O.S. or N.S. suffix (denoting Old Style, Julian or New Style, Gregorian).

More information: Calendarr

Calendars and clocks exist to measure time,
 but that signifies little
because we all know that an hour can seem
as eternity or pass in a flash,
according to how we spend it.

Michael Ende

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, LATIN LANGUAGE INFLUENCER

Today, The Grandma has been doing one of her favourite hobbies -reading in Latin and translate it to Catalan. She has chosen her favourite author, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar and philosopher, who was killed on a day like today in 43 BC.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (3 January 106 BC-7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher and Academic Skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire.

His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.

His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century.

Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary with neologisms such as evidentia, humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia, distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher.

Though he was an accomplished orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. It was during his consulship that the second Catilinarian conspiracy attempted to overthrow the government through an attack on the city by outside forces, and Cicero suppressed the revolt by summarily and controversially executing five conspirators.

During the chaotic middle period of the 1st century BC, marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government.

Following Caesar's death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and consequently executed by soldiers operating on their behalf in 43 BC having been intercepted during an attempted flight from the Italian peninsula.

His severed hands and head were then, as a final revenge of Mark Antony, displayed on the Rostra.

Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, and classical Roman culture.

His works rank among the most influential in European culture, and today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on 3 January 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometres southeast of Rome. He belonged to the tribus Cornelia. His father was a well-to-do member of the equestrian order and possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he could not enter public life and studied extensively to compensate.

Although little is known about Cicero's mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of significant Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Cicero's brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife.

Cicero wanted to pursue a public career in politics, along the steps of the Cursus honorum. In 90-88 BC, he served both Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as they campaigned in the Social War, though he had no taste for military life, being an intellectual first and foremost.

Cicero started his career as a lawyer around 83–81 BC. The first extant speech is a private case from 81 BC, the pro Quinctio, delivered when Cicero was aged 26, though he refers throughout to previous defences he had already undertaken.

His first office was as one of the twenty annual quaestors, a training post for serious public administration in a diversity of areas, but with a traditional emphasis on administration and rigorous accounting of public monies under the guidance of a senior magistrate or provincial commander. Cicero served as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BC and demonstrated honesty and integrity in his dealings with the inhabitants.

Cicero, seizing the opportunity offered by optimate fear of reform, was elected consul for the year 63 BC; he was elected with the support of every unit of the centuriate assembly, rival members of the post-Sullan establishment, and the leaders of municipalities throughout post–Social War Italy. His co-consul for the year, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, played a minor role.

He began his consular year by opposing a land bill proposed by a plebeian tribune, which would have appointed commissioners with semi-permanent authority over land reform.

In 60 BC, Julius Caesar invited Cicero to be the fourth member of his existing partnership with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, an assembly that would eventually be called the First Triumvirate.

Cicero refused the invitation because he suspected it would undermine the Republic.

Cicero and Antony now became the two leading men in Rome: Cicero as spokesman for the Senate; Antony as consul, leader of the Caesarian faction, and unofficial executor of Caesar's public will. Relations between the two were never friendly, and worsened after Cicero claimed that Antony was taking liberties in interpreting Caesar's wishes and intentions.

Cicero and all of his contacts and supporters were numbered among the enemies of the state, even though Octavian argued for two days against Cicero being added to the list.

Cicero was one of the most viciously and doggedly hunted among the proscribed. He was viewed with sympathy by a large segment of the public, and many people refused to report that they had seen him.

He was caught on 7 December 43 BC leaving his villa in Formiae in a litter heading to the seaside, where he hoped to embark on a ship destined for Macedonia. When his killers -Herennius (a Centurion) and Popilius (a Tribune)- arrived, Cicero's own slaves said they had not seen him, but he was given away by Philologus, a freedman of his brother Quintus Cicero.

As reported by Seneca the Elder, according to the historian Aufidius Bassus, Cicero's last words are said to have been:

Ego vero consisto. Accede, veterane, et, si hoc saltim potes recte facere, incide cervicem.

I go no further: approach, veteran soldier, and, if you can at least do so much properly, sever this neck.

Download Extracts Narrative and Descriptive by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero has been traditionally considered the master of Latin prose, with Quintilian declaring that Cicero was not the name of a man, but of eloquence itself.

The English words Ciceronian (meaning eloquent) and cicerone (meaning local guide) derive from his name. He is credited with transforming Latin from a modest, utilitarian language into a versatile literary medium capable of expressing abstract and complicated thoughts with clarity.

Cicero was declared a righteous pagan by the Early Church, and therefore many of his works were deemed worthy of preservation. The Bogomils considered him a rare exception to a pagan saint.

Subsequent Roman and medieval Christian writers quoted liberally from his works De Re Publica (On the Commonwealth) and De Legibus (On the Laws), and much of his work has been recreated from these surviving fragments.

Cicero also articulated an early, abstract conceptualization of rights, based on ancient law and custom. Of Cicero's books, six on rhetoric have survived, as well as parts of seven on philosophy. Of his speeches, 88 were recorded, but only 52 survive.

Download The Republic by Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need.

Marcus Tullius Cicero