The Calendar by David Ewing Duncan

authority and of an empire that believed it had the power to reorder time--not only for its own people but for subjects living in far-flung locales, from the English Channel to what is now Iraq. Fortunately for the millions of people who would have to use his calendar, Caesar’s hubris coincided with the pragmatism of a veteran general and statesman who based his new calendar on science, not vanity or religious dogma. In any case, Rome’s old lunar calendar was in desperate need of reform, running in Caesar’s day several months fast against the solar year.
     
    Like many other ancient cultures, the Romans centuries earlier had developed a system based on a 12-month lunar year, plus occasional days and months intercalated by priests to keep the calendar year more or less in line with the seasons. But over the centuries the calendar had drifted back and forth because the priests either neglected to insert extra months or because they intentionally manipulated the calendar for political reasons. For instance, the highly politicized college of priests sometimes increased the length of the year to keep consuls and senators they favoured in office longer, or decreased the year to shorten rivals’ terms. The college also misused their calendar to increase or decrease taxes and rents, sometimes for their personal financial advantage.
    By legend, the Roman calendar--our calendar--was created by the mythic first king of Rome, Romulus, when he founded the city in 753 BC--year 1 in the Roman calendar, known as ab urbe condita (AUC), ‘from the founding of the city’. But unlike most moon-based calendars, Romulus for some unknown reason concocted a year composed of only 10 months, not 12, for a year that totalled 304 days. The ancient Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), who wrote poems about love and about the calendar, submits that the erring warrior-king ‘was better versed in swords than stars’, and may have been trying to emulate ‘the time that suffices for a child to come forth from its mother’s womb’--a gestation period roughly corresponding to 304 days. Another reason may have been the Roman reverence for the number 10, says Ovid, ‘because that is the number of the fingers by which we are wont to count.’ Romulus repeatedly used the number 10 in organizing his new kingdom, dividing both the 100 senators and his military units of spearmen, infantry and javelin throwers into groups of 10. Latin numerals themselves--I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X--are probably symbols meant to represent fingers counting up to 10, with the V perhaps equating to an upraised thumb and index finger and the X to an upraised palm.
    Romulus’s infatuation with ten extended to naming his months. In one of the more unimaginative bursts of calendar making, this ancient king started out attaching descriptive names to Roman months, then seems to have run out of ideas. The first four months he named Martis for the god of war; Aprilis, which probably refers to raising hogs; Maius, for a local Italian goddess; and Junius, for the queen of the Latin gods. Then he simply fell into counting the months, naming them the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth: in Latin Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December. This mythic king’s lack of attention explains why the tenth, eleventh and twelfth months of our modern calendar are still numbered in Latin as the eighth, ninth and tenth months.
    Romulus and his successors were equally unimaginative in their system of numbering days of the month. They divided up each month not into weeks, which were introduced in Europe much later, but into day markers that fell at the beginning of the month, on the fifth (or seventh) day and in the middle. These three signal days were called kalends (the origin of our word calendar), nones and ides. Most other days in the Roman calendar had no given name. Instead each was numbered in a confusing system according to how many days it fell before