From: Larry Colen
On 3/15/2010 2:01 PM, John Sessoms wrote:
> From: Bruce Dayton
>> So just what is an 'Ide' anyway and are there 'Ides' for any other
>> month? Inquiring minds want to know.
>>
>> Interesting place and nicely done. Thanks for sharing it.
>
> Romans counted dates backwards from three fixed points: the Nones, the
> Ides and the Kalends of the following month.
>
> The Romans originally had a 10 month lunar calender. Martius was the
> first month, and the tenth month was December, then there's about 61
> days of winter that weren't in any month before the next year starts.
One of my favorite bits of trivia is that the reason that months 9, 10,
11 and 12 are named 7, 8, 9 and 10 is because there were two months
added, which were named for Julius and Augustus Ceaser.
Except that those two months that were added are January & February, ca
713 BC by Numa Pompilius. The "new" calendar still didn't have enough
days, running about 355.
The High Priest of Rome had charge of the calendar, and was responsible
for adding in inter-calery months ad hoc to continually re-sync their
with the physical year. They'd add a leap month every other year, and it
would be inserted into the MIDDLE of February.
When Julius Caesar was Pope (Pontifex Maximus) he reformed the Roman
Calendar so that it should have automatically stayed in sync, but they
proclaimed too many leap years in the early empire - approximately every
3 years from 45 BC to 8 AD.
The months named for the two Caesars already existed as Quintilis (5)
and Sextilis (6).
Quintilis became Julius (actually Iulius since the Roman alphabet didn't
have the letter 'J') because that's the month Caesar was born.
I'm not sure why Sextilis became Augustus, other than it's the month
that follows Julius. Octavian was born in September.
Other Roman Emperors re-named months to honor themselves or their
predecessors as well, but those are the only two that stuck.
Our current calendar is approximately that Julius instituted, with about
18 days chopped out by Pope Gregory (hence Gregorian Calendar) to get
Easter back to the right time of year.
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