I agree with this idea that Romans may well have compressed time. The famous adage: felicior Augusto, melior Traiano, may he be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan, shows how easy it was for them to associate men seperated by a period of almost a century and then to take that association and use it into the later Roman Empire. Of course this could be caused in part by the Roman dating. To say, "in the Consulships of Gaius Sulpicius Galba and Decimus Haterius Agrippa", to A Roman in AD 122, would surely not be as illuminating as to say, "in AD22".