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Lawful and Non-Lawful
Days
The lawful (fasti) days are the days when
human activities are allowed, in a mystical manner, whereas
the non-lawful days (nefasti) belong to the gods. In
particular, public activities such as sessions of tribunals
and assemblies of the Roman People (comitia) are allowed
only on lawful days, and not even on all of these but only
on "comitial" days. Lawful and non-lawful days should not be
confused with feast (festi) days and working (profesti)
days. For example, the market days are feast days but they
are not nefasti days. However, all public feast days are
declared nefasti, non-lawful, and any human activity carried
out during such days would not be approved by the gods.
In Roman calendars, ordinary lawful days are marked with a F
and lawful days when comitia are allowed are marked with a
C. Ordinary non-lawful days are marked with a N (nefasti)
and those non-lawful days that correspond to a public feast
are marked NP. Some days are marked EN (endotercisi, cuts in
half) because they are non-lawful in the morning and the
evening and lawful the rest of the day. The days marked
Q.R.C.F. (quando rex comitiavit, fas ) start as non-lawful
but become lawful when the rex sacrorum declares open a
session of the comitia. Finally, June 15 is marked Q.ST.D.F.
(quando stercus delatum, fas), which means that this
non-lawful day becomes lawful when the mess has been cleaned
out of the temple of Vesta.
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