For example, what did they call 50 BC at the time?
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For example, what did they call 50 BC at the time?
It varied a lot by location. The Chinese and Jews of course have their own calender to this day. But Rome had their own and even the ancient Celtic peoples of the British isles and the people of South America had their own calenders. It varied all over the world but in the area of Jerusalem, the Roman and Jewish calenders were probably prevalent.
Odd you should pick 50 BC as that was right about the time the Romans went from the pre-Julian to the Julian Calender. Looking it up I find the listed year as 46 BC. Here is what I used to check the date.
The other local calendar I can think of would be the Persian Calendar, but I know very little about it.
Depends on who and where you were. If you mean "what did people in Jesus' own town call 50BC," they may have been using the Hebrew calendar, which is about 3720 years "ahead" of our modern calendar.
Often people would count the number of the year in the reign of the current ruler. The Japanese do so to this day, at least for certain purposes. The current year is Heisei 21.
The Romans elected their two consuls for terms of one year, meaning that they would simply use the names. 50 BC would be the consulate of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor. Later, after Christ but before the AD count caught on, there was a system called ab urbe condita (from the foundation of the city) that counted from 753 BC on, but it was never very common.
How did people refer to their date of birth back then, or had birthday celebrations not quite taken off at that point?
Would I be right in guessing that people who lived beyond the major civilisations/cities didn't even keep track of the years, being far more interested in the seasons? What reasons would they have for caring what year it was?
Marking the years was more of an urban thing but not exclusive. Even as recently as the 1800s people seemed to be fuzzy on birth years quite often. Time and Date became far more important in the last 150 years or so than in prior times.Quote:
Originally posted by ivan astikov