fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st) of the following month. The Nones of February was the 5th, and the Ides the 13th. The last day of February was the pridie Kalendas Martias, "day before the Kalends of March". Roman counting was inclusive; February 9 was ante diem V Idūs Februarias, "the 5th day before the Ides (13th) of February," usually abbreviated a.d. V Id. Feb. (or with the a.d. omitted altogether); February 23 was VI Kal. Mart., "the 6th day before the Kalends of March." February had one and possibly two moveable feasts (feriae conceptivae). The Amburbium ("City Circuit") was a purification of the whole city with no fixed date, but seems to have been held in February. The Fornacalia ("Oven Festival") was celebrated by the thirty ancient divisions of the Roman people known as curiae. Each curia celebrated a festival separately under its own leader (curio) on various days following the Nones. These dates were established and publicized by the curio maximus, the chief curio. Anyone who missed the Fornacalia celebrated by his own curia, or who didn't know his curia, could attend a public festival which was always held as the concluding ceremony on February 17. The Fornacalia overlapped with the festival of the ancestral dead that dominated the month, and on its last day coincided with the Quirinalia, a day also known as the Feast of Fools (feriae stultorum). Februarius was thus such a religiously complex month that during the Julian reform of the calendar, when days were added to some months, it was left as it had been, even though it was the shortest month. Each day was marked with a letter to denote its status under religious law. In the month of February: F for dies fasti, days when it was legal to initiate action in the courts of civil law; C for dies comitalis, a day on which the Roman people could hold assemblies (comitia), elections, and certain kinds of judicial proceedings; N for dies nefasti, when these political activities and the administration of justice were prohibited; NP, the meaning of which remains elusive, but which marked feriae, public holidays; EN for endotercissus, an archaic form of intercissus, "cut in half," meaning days that were nefasti in the morning, when sacrifices were being prepared,