Acta Diurna
The Acta Diurna or Acta (diurna) populi (Romani), Acta publica, urbana, urbis, diurna populi , which one can translate by Faits of the day indicated with Rome an official collection which contained the summary of the daily events: decisions and deliberations of the Senate and the people, capital executions, births, marriages, divorces, funeral of the famous people, announces public plays.
This collection was made public about the year 131 av. J. - C.
Jules César at the time of his consulate in -59 hitherto diffused also the newspaper of the reports of the meetings of the Sénat ( Acta Senatus ), kept secret. This publication was cancelled by Auguste.
We have an idea of their contents by the evocations that make the Latin authors of them, and of the form of use in Ier century by Pétrone, which puts under the feather of the secretary of Trimalchion in the Satyricon a Pastiche which ends in an enumeration of ridiculous facts:
July 26th: in the property of Cumes, which belongs to Trimalchion, were born thirty boys and forty girls; were garnered, outgoing of the surface, five hundred and thousand bushels of wheat; were put for the first time under the yoke five hundred oxen. The same day: the Mithridate slave was put in cross because it had blasphemy against the genius of our Gaïus Master. The same day: one gave in the trunk because it was not possible to place it ten million Sesterce S. the same day: a fire was declared in the gardens pompéiens; it had taken in the house of the Nasta intendant. One lute still edicts taken by the municipal official S and of the wills of foresters, in which a codicil disinherited Trimalchion. Then it was the list of names of the intendants, repudiation by an inspector of the fields of one freed which it had surprised in the room of a boy of baths, then relegation with Baïes of a Master of hotel, then the committal for trial of a treasurer and a judgment given between manservants
Mass detailed informations, Acta diurna were documents exploited by Tacite, and probably by other Roman historians.
By their contents, the acta diurna precede the first newspapers; on the other hand, their distribution support is connected more with public posting.
| Random links: | Achilles | Jalal Zoghlami | Sebastián González | Jules Joseph Van den Weghe | Livio Maitan | Matthew_Richardson |