How did the Romans know it was 33BC etc??

Question

Could they see in to the future or something and what year did they stamp on coins??

Answer 1

In a word, they didn't. Romans dated their years "from the foundation of the city" (i.e. Rome), in Latin ab urbe condita. Since Rome was founded in the year known to us as 753 B.C., one adds 753 to a year in the Western Christian calendar - for example, 2006 A.D. would be 2759 A.U.C. to a Roman.
Because many different calendars were in use in the ancient world, it was customary to describe a year according to the number of years the sovereign of the area had ruled, e.g. 2006 A.D. would in this way be "the fifty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth II (a system still formally used to describe Acts of Parliament). In Republican times, Romans would use this system to describe a year by the name of the two consuls who governed that year (e.g. "in the year when Gaius Marius and Sextus Metellus were consuls"). As Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, and then most of Europe, the A.U.C. description became the norm.

Answer 2

Rome was around when Jesus was born. The romans invented our modern calendar called the Gregorian Calendar. However it was some time later it came into effect.

Have you ever wondered how Oct means 8 but it's the 10th month in the calendar? Well it's because they added in July (for Julius Caesar) and August (for Augustus) to pay tribute to them.

How did the people fighting the 1st world war know there was going to be another one???

The 1st world war was called "the great war" until another one happened. Same with BC - it was added later.

Answer 3

They used a different calendar. It was long after the story of the birth of christ that today's calendar was put into use.

I don't know that they stamped any year on their coins...I don't see that it would be necessary, but perhaps they did...

Do some research on pre-christian calendars and see what you come up with.

Answer 4

Not necessarily on coins, but they also would use phrases such as 'in the year of the consuls _____ and ____'. The Athenians did that do with their archons. From a wide variety of sources (literary, epigraphic, and numismatic) we know who was consul in each year and this way we can date these artifacts. The Roman historian,Tacitus, will often name the consuls of each year and in this way we can pinpoint the year he's talking about.

Answer 5

They didn't. They stamped emporos heads on the coins. I think they used a system of Emporor so and so's 3rd year etc.

Answer 6

Roman literature generally refers to years by giving the names of emperors or senators who were in power at the time, rather than a numbering system. I can only assume this was common usage at the time.

Answer 7

They didn't have a concrete Calendar system that lasted any longer than a year. The years were referred to by how long the current emperor had been in power (e.g. in the fifth year of Augustus Ceasar)

Answer 8

You've been reading the
"How do I make myself look like a burke"
book again, haven't you?

Dates on the coins went by the current length of reign of the particular Emporer.

Answer 9

They used a different calendar, calculating dates from the foundation of Rome, and using eponymous consul-years (in the same way that the Athenians dated events by the eponymous archon).

Answer 10

They did not... all dates in the Roman empire were calculated from the original founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus in 753 B.C.E.

The dates they had on their coins go forward from there