Did the Ancient Romans have a weekend?

Answer 1

My degree is in Ancient History and Classical Civilization. I can tell you the following:

-- No, the Romans did not have weekends -- until the end of the empire when the Romans converted to Christianity.

-- Romans did not have "weeks" until after the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century CE.

-- The traditional Roman calendar was very complicated and differed each month. Each month had a set of days that were "nefasti", or "not fit for work". These days were considered unlucky to conduct business -- except of course when necessary for war.

-- These "nefasti" days were not paired at the end of each week, but scattered throughout the month. So, Romans got their rest like we do on Saturdays and Sundays, but not in a regular pattern.

-- Some days were not just unlucky, they were days that commemorated awful events. These were "rest" days like our Memorial Day. They called these "dies atri", or "black days" or "days of shadow" (if you want to sound Tolkienesque). The Romans would have made September 11th a Black Day for sure and it would have become a day of rest and remembrance.

-- Weekends started when the Romans converted to Christianity. The Sabbath (Saturday) was holy to the Jews and was respected also by Christians. But Sunday was even more special to Christians of course because the resurrection happened on Sunday.

-- So, the Romans combined their months with the Jewish system of weeks. This pretty much formed our Calendar as we know it today.

Answer 2

The Romans didn't even have a week. Only the Romans living in the eastern part of the empire adopted the Babylonian concept of a week. Saturday has is name from the roman god Saturn. For the rest of the empire, every month had three holidays called ides, kalends and nones.

It wasn't until Christianity became state religion in the 4th century that the Romans had the biblical week with it's sabbatical seventh day.

Answer 3

There weren't any weekends in the Greek-Roman world. But there were a lot of festivals (mainly religious) that people use as weekends.

Answer 4

Probably - but americans will believe anything you tell them.

Once I convinced 2 girls in a bar that there was no such thing as wednesdays outside the USA and that the rest of the world only had a 6 day week.

Answer 5

what does that have to do with anything?...if they did, they would waste it by watching people go up against wild beasts and get soaked in blood while one or the other died, or even both... is that really as relaxing as a weekend is supposed to be? To a psychotic Roman, maybe.... but to me, not so much...

Answer 6

Only if the Emperor declared it