Pax Romana

I really did not intend to talk about taxes. What with talking about Caesar, and the coming of Spring, I thought we might take a brief look at the development of the calendar as we know it. The original Roman calendar was attributed to Romulus himself. It consisted of 10 lunar months that began in Spring and ended in December with the autumn planting. The period in between was ignored since no agricultural work was carried out during those months.We still have some remnants of that calendar in that the last 4 months are named with the Latin words; September (7th), October (8th), November (9th), and December (10th). The fifth month was named Quintilis (later renamed as July in honor of Julius), and the sixth month was Sextilis (later renamed as August in honor of Augustus).

It is said that Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, developed the 12-month calendar. His calendar consisted of 354 days. He added the months of January and February. There was then a superstition that even numbers brought bad luck. Hence, the months of Martius (March), Maius (May), Quintilis, and October had thirty-one days. The rest all had 29 except February which had 28. February was devoted to the rites of purification (februa) for the festivals of the new year. Again, because of the superstition about even numbers, one additional day was added to the calendar. That day did not belong to any of the months. Because things soon got all out of wack,

Julius, after returning from his Egyptian campaign in 46 BC, developed a new calendar that was based on the solar year instead of the lunar cycles. It was put into effect on January 1, 45 BC. One or two days were added to the months with 29 days to compensate for the 10 lost days of the old calendar. Also, because there was 1/4 day extra each year, there was a single day added every four years (what we now know as leap year).

After his execution, the month Quinctilis was renamed Julius (July). Because of the Roman method of counting, the leap day was added every 3 years instead of 4. Augustus omitted the extra days until they were caught up. By AD 8, the calendar had been corrected. The month Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) and the extra day every 4 years was put into the month of February as we know it today.

Because 365.25 days is not exactly one year, the calendar again began drifting away from the true solar calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII omitted 10 days by declaring that October 4 was to be followed by October 15 that year. From that time on, leap years were to be omitted in years that were multiples of 100 except when the year was divisible by 400. (We just experienced one of those exceptions in the year 2000. That is why there was a leap year in 2000, even though there was not one in 1900.) We are still using the Gregorian calendar. Some day additional corrections will have to be made since the Gregorian calendar does not compensate exactly for the length of the solar year.

I suppose this is more than you ever wanted to know about the calendar, but I think it is kind of neat. We have not discussed the origins of the names January, March, April, May, and June. Why don't you investigate those names?