OK, so I lied about not posting any more on this topic. Gotta weed out the hoaxes, though.
Timothy Partridge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As for the number of days out of sync since Julius Caesar's time, > I don't have the full details but the calendar had problems after > Julius changed it. His Greek astonomer said leap years every four > years. So they did. Unfortunately the Romans counted inclusively > but the Greeks exclusively (like we do). So every four years to > the Romans is what we would call every three years. It took them > a while to realise. Augustus (or his administration, anyway) figured this out by 12 BC or so, and cancelled all leap years until the problem corrected itself. > Augustus had a go at the calendar too. Pinched a day from February > leaving it with just 28/29 (Julius gave it 29/30) and gave it to > the month renamed after him (so it would be the same length as > July). HOAX ALERT. This one is extremely widespread, even among the top authorities, but in fact there is ample evidence that Februarius and Sextilis already had 28/29 and 31 days respectively. The renaming of Sextilis to Augustus was also the work of the Senate, not Augustus Caesar, and was largely due to his deft handling of the leap year problem as mentioned above. > Would that cause a one day shift of the spring equinox too? It would, if (a) things had actually happened that way and (b) the date for the spring equinox had been set that decisively at the time. Unfortunately, the Romans had just recently reformed a calendar than was THREE MONTHS out of whack, and wouldn't particularly have noticed a day here or there. All right, folks, Unicode 3.2 just got released. Surely we can stay on topic... -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
