Rough Roman Memes

When having his civil war against Pompey and the senate, Caesar did exploit the fact, that while he held the office of pontifex maximus, he was in charge of the Roman calendar, which by that time had begun to badly run out of sync with the seasons. (It had to be synchronised by adding in a number of days occasionally, this was one of the pontifex maximus' responsibilities) Thanks to his office, Caesar had not only a very good understanding of by how much the calendar had run out of sync, he could also keep it that way by simply not adding in the required extra days. His opponents weren't as well informed, which lead to a strategic advantage for Caesar, because waging war back then was pretty much a seasonal thing. Later in his careeer, Caesar actually introduced a calendar reform which lead to a much more accurate calendar that didn't need such a frequent resynchronisation.

Written latin was very, very different from day-to-day latin. I propose that this may have been one of those things that was done in a certain way in an official/cultured setting, where there was an expectation that the reader would be able to understand it, but not in daily life.

Asking a random farmer to count years based on consulship would be a tall order.
We know that a calendar dating sequentially from the founding of Rome existed and was occasionally used by writers, for example. We also know that many provinces maintained their own calendar, too, and sometimes other "landmark" years were remembered as well, such as the first Olympiad, or the Punic Wars.

It would not be a wild theory to say that common citizens counted years their own way, using familiar landmarks such as the founding of Rome, the first Olympiad etc, and counting from that. Maybe some landmarks were more popular than others depending in certain cities or provinces - I can see Greeks taking pride in remembering the first Olympiad, for example, while Italians would remember the Punic Wars, and Romans could easily produce the year the first plebeian consuls were elected.

Since I don't like theorycrafting without at least some source, I looked it up online and found this rather fascinating Reddit (I know, I know) thread from r/AskHistorians that has some written quotes on the matter. While not a definitive answer by any means (and, by the user's own admission, it's still theory without solid proof), I wouldn't say it's too farfetched to think that alternatives to consulship years existed for common citizens to use in daily life.