section_path: Use
section_name: Use
paragraph_text: Use
  
  Prior to the Roman state's adoption of the Varronian chronology – created by Titus Pomponius Atticus and Marcus Terentius Varro – there were many different dates posited for when the city was founded. This state of confusion required picking a canonical founding date for one to use an AUC date. The Varronian chronology, constructed from fragmentary sources and demonstrably about four years off of absolute events c. 340 BC, placed the founding of the city on 21 April 753 BC. This date, likely arrived at by mechanical calculation but accepted with a variance of one year by the Augustan-era fasti Capitolini, has become the traditional date.
  
  From the time of Claudius (r. AD 41–51) onward, this calculation superseded other contemporary calculations. Celebrating the anniversary of the city became part of imperial propaganda. Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honor of the anniversary of the city, in AD 47, the eight hundredth year from the founding of the city. Hadrian, in AD 121, and Antoninus Pius, in AD 147 and AD 148, held similar celebrations respectively.
  
  In AD 248, Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's first millennium, together with Ludi saeculares for Rome's alleged tenth saeculum. Coins from his reign commemorate the celebrations. A coin by a contender for the imperial throne, Pacatianus, explicitly states "ear one thousand and first", which is an indication that the citizens of the empire had a sense of the beginning of a new era, a Sæculum Novum.