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Tiw, or Tir, is an older god representing justice and order and is probably originally a sky god. Woden (Wotan or Odin), Thor, and the goddess Freya need no introduction. The claim that Saturday is "Saturn's day" is a mistake made frequently enough to warrant a disclaimer. "Saeter" is the name for a fire-related manifestation of the god known as Loki in the Norse tales. |
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The Portuguese model follows the Jewish model, simply numbering the "feria," but most of the Romance languages follow the pattern established in Latin by the Roman calendar (Table 2.1). |
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The order of this assignment of planets to days of the week is not arbitrary, but is a consequence of the Roman astrological concept that each planet controls a successive hour of the day and rules the day whose first hour it controls. The planets are ordered in terms of their decreasing sidereal period, which is (1) Saturn, (2) Jupiter, (3) Mars, (4) Sun, (5) Venus, (6) Mercury, (7) Moon. That is, the Romans ordered the planets in terms of their apparent speed from the slowest to the fastest, as shown in Table 2.2 for a 24-hour period. |
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This scheme is then extended to the following day, so that the first hour of the second day is ruled by the planet following the ruler of the last (24th) hour of the first day (Mars). That ruling planet is, therefore, the Sun. |
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A 24-hour × 7-day matrix can be completed in this way. I will not repeat this large and tedious construction here. Reading across the completed matrix for all seven days, the very top line (hour 1) reveals the order: SaturnSunMoonMarsMercuryJupiterVenus This order is the order of the days of the week. The explanation for the origin of this system is due to Dio Cassius, and the scheme just outlined reconstructs the original Roman tables. |
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| Table 2.1 Assignment of planets to days of week. | | English | Latin | Planet | | Sunday | Dies Solis | Sun | | Monday | Dies Lunae | Moon | | Tuesday | Dies Martis | Mars | | Wednesday | Dies Mercurii | Mercury | | Thursday | Dies Jovis | Jupiter | | Friday | Dies Veneris | Venus | | Saturday | Dies Saturni | Saturn |
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