How would a Roman have written a date, say, when writing a letter, assuming that they did date their letters?
How would they have cited a date in the text of a book, such as, say, ‘on the tenth of May, the 9th legion marched to the frontier’?
Did they commonly use numerals for either the day or the month, or did they write it all out? What about the year?
For that matter, from what starting point did they count their years?
While I’m at it, when mentioning the hour, I assume that they would have written something like, ‘in (or during) the eighth hour’?
Thank you, Adrianus. As interesting as it is, the complexity of Roman date reconing makes me sorry I even asked. I’m going to give it a shot anyway, since it seems to me that at times it would be quite important to get your dates right when reading Latin texts, such as when a sequence of events is being narrated.
Welcome to the world of Latin… 
I think it’s not the date reckoning that’s complex, so much as the conversion… I could probably make a quick tool for converting between the Ancient Roman and modern ways of writing dates if you’d like. 
Furrykef, such a tool would be wonderful, and would come in handy. How difficult would it be to make?
I guess determining the date of the month in the Roman calendar would be easier if one kept in mind the concept of reading the hands of a clock: 'seven minutes ‘till two, fifteen till seven, half past the hour’, etc.
Here is a video (“Roman Calendar Page from Mundus”) of such a tool in my Mundus program, illustrating also English and Latin text-to-speech.
En taeniola talis instrumenti in programmate meo Mundus nomine, quod anglicè latinéque processum notarum in sermones vertendarum demonstrat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMpSTCI2g-c
or
http://www.youtube.com/user/adrianmallon?feature=mhum
Adrianus, that’s a wonderful programme. I never expected to find anything like this, nor for that matter, anything like the elingua suite.
Is this program available online? I found a references to it in a journal, but not the program itself.
Vale,
Raymond A. Blacketer, PhD
Id non jam prodidi, o drdominee, quod Id non jam perfeci. Minùs efficax est locutio synthetica systematis interni Windows nomine. Id benè autem cum systemate Mac operat. Forsit solo Mac systemati intero proditurum sit.
I haven’t yet published it, drdominee, because I didn’t finish it. It works nicely on a Mac but I couldn’t get the synthetic voice working as I needed on a PC. Maybe I should release in just on Mac.