Hiya Dave ---

>You're right Hugo, there was no year zero (AD 0 or BC 0).
>The people at the time, perhaps 300AD hadn't invented the number zero! Which made math kinda hard.
>Of course be suspicious of coins marked 50BC claiming to be Roman :-)

Ahh, but there was a zero! Just no Roman symbol to note it. The Persians, Hindus (I think) and Ptolemaic Egyptians recognized zero....the Romans recognized the concept, but assigned no special notice to it.

I doubt, though, that Emperor Augustus had some scribe run up to him and say "Sir, we need to start putting Zero on our calendars!"