Ab urbe condita (Latin:[abˈʊrbɛˈkɔndɪtaː]; 'from thefounding of the City'), oranno urbis conditae (Latin:[ˈannoːˈʊrbɪsˈkɔndɪtae̯]; 'in the year since the city's founding'), abbreviated asAUC orAVC, expresses a date in years since753 BC, the traditional founding of Rome.[1][2] It is an expression used in antiquity and byclassical historians to refer to a given year inAncient Rome. In reference to the traditional year of the foundation of Rome, the year1 BC would be written AUC 753, whereasAD 1 would be AUC 754. The foundation of theRoman Empire in27 BC would be AUC 727. The current year AD 2025 would be AUC 2778.
Usage of the term was more common during theRenaissance, 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 twoconsuls who held office that year.[3] In late antiquity,regnal years were also in use, as inRoman Egypt during theDiocletian era afterAD 293, and in theByzantine Empire from AD 537, following a decree byJustinian.
Prior to the Roman state's adoption of theVarronian chronology – created byTitus Pomponius Atticus andMarcus Terentius Varro – there were many different dates posited for when the city was founded. This state of confusion required picking a canonical founding date for one to use an AUC date. The Varronian chronology, constructed from fragmentary sources and demonstrably about four years off of absolute eventsc. 340 BC,[4] placed the founding of the city on 21 April 753 BC. This date, likely arrived at by mechanical calculation but accepted with a variance of one year by the Augustan-erafasti Capitolini, has become the traditional date.[5]
From the time ofClaudius (r. AD 41–51) onward, this calculation superseded other contemporary calculations. Celebrating the anniversary of the city became part of imperialpropaganda. Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honor of the anniversary of the city, in AD 47,[6][7] the eight hundredth year from the founding of the city.[8]Hadrian, in AD 121, andAntoninus Pius, in AD 147 and AD 148, held similar celebrations respectively.
In AD 248,Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's firstmillennium, together withLudi saeculares for Rome's alleged tenthsaeculum. Coins from his reign commemorate the celebrations. A coin by a contender for the imperial throne,Pacatianus, explicitly states "[y]ear one thousand and first", which is an indication that the citizens of the empire had a sense of the beginning of a new era, aSæculum Novum.
TheAnno Domini (AD) year numbering was developed by a monk namedDionysius Exiguus in Rome in AD525 (AUC1278), 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 theDiocletian era. This convention had been in use since AD 293, the year of thetetrarchy, as it became impractical to use regnal years of the current emperor.[9] In his Easter table, the year AD532 (AUC1285) was equated with the 248thregnal year ofDiocletian. The table counted the years starting from the presumed birth of Christ, rather than the accession of the emperorDiocletian 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").[10] Blackburn and Holford-Strevens review interpretations of Dionysius which place theIncarnation in 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1.[11]
The year AD 1 corresponds to AUC 754, based on the epoch ofVarro. Thus:
^Flower, Harriet I. (2014).The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic. Cambridge University Press. p. 51.ISBN9781107032248.
^Forsythe, Gary (2005).A critical history of early Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 279.ISBN978-0-520-94029-1.OCLC70728478.
^Cornell, Tim (1995).The beginnings of Rome. London: Routledge. p. 73.ISBN0-415-01596-0.OCLC31515793. Varro likely arrived at 753 BC by counting seven generations of 35 years from his date for the founding of the republic in 509 BC.
^Tacitus, Cornelius.Furneaux, Henry (ed.).Annals XI (in Latin) (1907 ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 17.ludi saeculares octingentesimo post Romam conditam
^Hobler, Francis (1860).Records of Roman history, from Cnaeus Pompeius to Tiberius Constantinus, as exhibited on the Roman coins. London:John Bowyer Nichols. p. 222.
^Blackburn, B. & Holford-Strevens, L,The Oxford Companion to the Year (Oxford University Press, 2003 corrected reprinting, originally 1999), pp. 778–780.
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