Indiction
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An indiction (
History
Indictions originally referred to the periodic reassessment for an agricultural or land tax in the Roman Empire. There were three different cycles: a 15-year cycle used throughout the empire; a 14-year cycle used in Roman Egypt; and a five year cycle called the lustrum, derived from the Roman Republican census. Changes to the tax system usually took place at the beginning of one of these cycles and at the end of the indiction Emperors often chose to forgive any arrears. The 15-year cycle can be traced in literary and epigraphic references to taxation reforms and the cancellation of arrears.[2]
Principate
The
The 14-year cycle used in Egypt derived from the fact that liability for the Egyptian
Late Antiquity and Middle Ages
The 15-year cycle was introduced as a dating system on documents throughout the Roman empire by
The indiction was first used to date documents unrelated to tax collection in the mid-fourth century. By the late fourth century it was being used to date documents throughout the
The 7,980-year
Terminology
When the term "indiction" began to be used, it referred only to the full cycle, and individual years were referred to as being Year 1 of the indiction, Year 2 of the indiction, etc. It gradually became common to apply the term to the years themselves, which thus became the first indiction, the second indiction, and so on.
Calculation
The Roman indiction for a modern Anno Domini year Y (January 1 to December 31) is as follows:[19]
- (Y + 3) mod 15
For example, the indiction for the year 2017 is 10[20]
- (2017 + 3) mod 15 = 10
Historically the Indiction numbering runs 1 through 15, with no zero; however, reducing modulo 15 as in the formula above produces a range of 0 through 14 instead, as can be seen when applying it to the year 2022:
- (2022+3) mod 15 = 0
You can simply read the result 0 as 15, but if you want the actual arithmetic result to be in the 1-15 range, just delay the addition of a value of 1 from the offset until after the mod operation:
- (Y + 2) mod 15 + 1
That yields the expected answer for 2022:
- (2022+2) mod 15 + 1 = 15
References
- ^ "indiction". www.merriam-webster.com. Archived from the original on 2021-04-20. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
- ^ Duncan-Jones 1994 pp.59-63.
- ^ Duncan-Jones 1994 p 59 n. 66.
- ^ Cassius Dio, Roman History 60.10.4
- ^ a b c d e f g h Duncan-Jones 1994 p. 60
- ^ Tacitus, Annales 13.31, 50-51
- ^ PIR2 3, p. 182
- ^ ILS 309; Cassius Dio 69.8.1; Historia Augusta Hadriani 7.6
- ^ Cassius Dio 71.32.2
- ^ Chronicon Paschale (Chron. Min. I, p. 224)
- ^ Cassius Dio 71.32.2; Chronograph of 354 (Chron. Min. I, p. 147)
- ^ a b c d Duncan-Jones 1994 p. 61.
- A. S. Huntand C.C. Edgar, Select Papyri, II. Non-literary Papyri. Public Documents (London: Loeb, 1932), pp. 104-109 no. 219
- ^ SB 7378; English translation in Hunt and Edgar, Select Papyri, II, pp. 574-577
- ^ Duncan-Jones 1994 p. 62 n. 84.
- ^ Duncan-Jones 1994 pp. 62-63.
- ^ Duncan-Jones 1994 p=63.
- ^ Constitutiones 4.21: De fide instrumentorum et amissione eorum et antapochis faciendis et de his quae sine scriptura fieri possunt; Novellae 47, 73.
- ^ Blackburn & Holford-Strevens p. 771
- ^ "Calendars" p. B4
Works cited
- Bonnie Blackburn, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, The Oxford Companion to the year (Oxford, 1999), p. 769-71.
- "Calendars" in Astronomical Almanac for the Year 2017 (Washington: US Government Publishing Office, 2016) p. B4.
- Chronicon paschale 284–628 AD, trans. Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (Liverpool, 1989), p. 10.
- Richard Duncan-Jones, Money and government in the Roman empire (Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 59-63.
Further reading
- Roger S. Bagnall, K. A. Worp, The chronological systems of Byzantine Egypt (Zutphen, 1978).
- Leo Depuydt, "AD 297 as the beginning of the first indiction cycle", The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 24:137–9.
- Yiannis E. Meimaris, Chronological systems in Roman-Byzantine Palestine and Arabia (Athens, 1992), 32-34
- S. P. Scott [Justinian I], "Forty-seventh new constitution" [Novella 47], The civil law [Corpvs jvris civilis] (1932; reprinted New York, 1973), 16 (in 7): 213-15.