This entry was posted on 7/3/2007 9:41 PM and is filed under Footnotes.
What’s the significance of a date? The 4th day of July, for instance (1). On 4th July 1054, a supernova was observed by the Chinese, the Arabs and possibly Amerindians near the star ζ Tauri - for several months it remained bright enough to be seen during the day and its remnants now form the Crab Nebula. On Saturday 4th July 1187, during the Crusades, Saladin defeated Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin. On 4th July 1712, 11 slaves were executed in New York for starting an uprising that killed 9 Caucasians. On 4th July 1976, the United States celebrated its bicentennial. It is that 4th July and its connection with birth the Republic that is most celebrated.
In the USA, 4th July is Independence Day because that it was on that day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was signed:
At the time the Declaration was issued, the American colonies were "united" in declaring their independence from Great Britain, but were not yet declaring themselves to be a single nation. That union would evolve and take shape during the next few years after the Declaration was issued. (2)
Or so it is the generally held belief. There was an act of the Second Continental Congress declaring the Thirteen Colonies to be independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, that proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on 7th June 1776. The ‘Lee Resolution of Independence’, as it is called, was passed on 2nd July. In response to this act, John Adams wrote his wife Abigail on July 3:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more. (2)
The formally entitled “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”, written chiefly by Thomas Jefferson, explained the justifications for separation from the British crown (3). The “unanimous Declaration” was an expansion of Lee’s Resolution, which first proclaimed independence, and declared that the Thirteen Colonies were independent of the Great Britain. It was adopted on 4th July 1776.
Or was it another date? An engrossed copy of the Declaration now on display in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC, shows that most of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress signed it on 2nd August (3).
2nd July, 4th July, 2nd August – all equally important dates in 1776 that set the Thirteen Colonies on a collision course with the ‘mother country’.
The fathers of that other great nation state of history, Rome, also had differences of opinion when it was founded:
During the Roman republic, several dates were given for the founding of the city, all in the interval between 758 BC and 728 BC. Finally, under the Roman Empire the date suggested by Marcus Terentius Varro (753 BC) was agreed upon, but in the Fasti Capitolini the year given was 752. While the years varied, all versions agreed that the city was founded on April 21, day of the festival sacred to Pales, goddess of shepherds; in her honour, Rome celebrated the Parilia (or Palilia). (It is to be noted, however, that the Roman Ab Urbe Condita (or A.U.C., literally translated as "From the city having been founded") calendar begins with Varro's dating of 753 BC.) (4)
So put 21st April in your diary – Rome Foundation Day.
In addition to the annual events, there were the centennary celebrations or saeculares (5). First taking place in 249 BC (some trace them back to 509 BC), the celebration took the form of Games (ludi), usually gladiatorial combats and sacrifices of animals to a host of deities including Dis Pater, Terra Mater and Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The Saecular Games continued to be celebrated under the emperors, but two different systems of calculation were used to determine their dates – 100 and 110 year cycles. Augustus held Games in 17 BC. Claudius held them in AD 47, to celebrate the 800th year from the foundation of Rome.
According to Suetonius, a herald's proclamation of a spectacle "which no one had ever seen or would ever see again" amused his listeners, some of whom had attended the Games under Augustus. (5)
Domitian celebrated his in AD 88, Antoninus Pius in 148, Septimius Severus in 204. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, held a fabulous celebration on the millennium of the foundation of Rome:
In April 248, Philip had the honour of leading the celebrations of the one thousandth birthday of Rome, founded in 753 BC by Romulus. He combined the anniversary with the celebration of Rome's alleged tenth saeculum. According to contemporary accounts, the festivities were magnificent and included spectacular games, ludi saeculares, and theatrical presentations throughout the city. In the coliseum, more than 1,000 gladiators were killed along with hundreds of exotic animals including hippos, leopards, lions, giraffes, and one rhinoceros. (6)
But no fireworks. The events were also celebrated in literature, with several publications specially prepared for the anniversary, including Asinius Quadratus’s History of a Thousand Years, now sadly lost (7). Plus there were commemorative coins.
By AD 314, and 110 years since the Games of Septimius Severus, the first Christian emperor Constantine reigned and no Secular Games were held. The pagan historian Zosimus (c. 498–518), who wrote the most detailed extant account of the Games, blamed this neglect of the traditional ritual no less than for the decline of the Roman Empire (5).
As a Brit, my own country of birth has neither an Independence Day nor a Foundation Day. As the Prime Minister’s website authoritatively informs us:
National Days in the UK are not celebrated to the same extent as National Days in countries like the United States or France. Each part of the United Kingdom has its own Saint's Day. (8)
The nations of the United Kingdom have their saints days – St David for Wales on 1st March, St Patrick for Northern Ireland on 17th March, St George for England on 23rd April and St Andrew for Scotland on 30th November. Although a regular working day, St David’s Day is celebrated across Wales with eisteddfodai and arts and crafts competitions in schools and “by the wearing of leeks or daffodils”, according to the PM’s website. St Andrews and St Patrick’s days are official holidays. Curiously, calls to create a St George’s Day holiday have met with a largely lukewarm reception (9).
As a nation built of successive waves of immigration over thousands of years – Bronze Age peoples, the Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings and Normans – there is no single recorded moment in time that can be truly considered the birth of the nation. Perhaps the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15th June 1215 (that’s ‘AD’) is a candidate? Or the dates of the signing of the acts of union that welded first Wales to England in 1536, then Scotland on 1st May 1707 (the tercentennary was marked by celebrations this year) to create the Kingdom of Great Britain? (10). Or my personal favourite, The Last Night of the Proms, when, to the sound of a big orchestra and choir, Brits can gather under the dome of The Royal Albert Hall in London or open sky in Carrickfergus, Glasgow, Swansea or Tees Valley and sing Land of Hope and Glory, sharing for the brief duration of that concert, a sense of nationhood (11). Watch a broadcast on the BBC of the Last Night: you see the flag waving, hear the heartfelt singing and laugh at the spontaneous tomfoolery, but you feel the outpouring of national pride and are touched by something intangibly British. And for those enjoying the open-air Prom concerts, held simultaneously with the one in The Royal Albert Hall, there are fireworks too. It's a lot like the 4th July concert on The Mall in Washington, DC. This year The Last Night of the Proms is on 8th September.
Independence Days set a stick in the shifting sands of History and enable a people to say “it all started then!” In the same way days borne of foundation myths provide a context, a story, that explains why it started. In a sense, my own country loses something for not having a day when all its people can gather,
My co-workers often jokingly ask me on 3rd July if I will be celebrating Independence Day. I am always happy to affirm that I will enjoy 4th July for all it is worth. Is it just "when in Rome, do as the Romans"? It's more than that. For me, living as a permanent resident in this great country, I reflect that while the birth of the United States was borne of an act of separation from the ‘mother country’, in another way it marked the beginning of that period that the great Winston Churchill described as the “special relationship” (12). Through two world wars and since, Britain and America have been allies – cultural, diplomatic, economic, military. Without that special relationship, I believe the world would be a darker place.
So, to all Americans – and would be Americans – everywhere, I say “Happy 4th!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_Rome: “In the modern period debate has raged over the validity of the stories of Rome's foundation. Scholars have supported both extremes—those who want to believe nothing of the legend, and those who want to believe the legend wholeheartedly without skepticism. Archaeology offers the best chance of sorting out the debate, and indeed recent discoveries on the Palatine Hill in Rome have offered some tantalizing pieces of evidence. Chief among these is a series of fortification walls on the north slope of the Palatine Hill that can be dated to the middle of the 8th century B.C., precisely the time when legend says Romulus plowed a furrow (sulcus) around the Palatine in order to mark the boundary of his new city. The remains of the wall, and other evidence, has been discovered by the excavations of Andrea Carandini.” See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_urbe_condita. For a current discussion of two perspectives, see the July/August 2007 issue of Archaeology magazine (http://www.archaeology.org/)
