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NUNDINAL

Volume 15 · 148 words · 1810 Edition

Nundinalis, a name which the Romans gave to the eight first letters of the alphabet used in their calendar.

This series of letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, is placed and repeated successively from the first to the last day of the year: one of these always expressed the market days, or the assemblies called nundinae, quasi novendiae, because they returned every nine days. The country people, after working eight days successively, came to town the ninth, to sell their several commodities, and to inform themselves of what related to religion and government. Thus the nundinal day being under A on the first, ninth, seventeenth, and twenty-fifth days of January, &c., the letter D will be the nundinal letter of the year following. These nundinals bear a very great resemblance to the dominical letters, which return every eight days, as the nundinals did every nine.