Off topic stuff - the 7th/9th month (was: Re: Ssystem bug)

[Konrad Kokoszkiewicz <draco@mi.com.pl>]

> > BTW, does anyone remember when they changed the start of the year from
> > March to January and why? Calling the 9th month the seventh always confuses
> > me.
> 
> There were originally ten months in the year, with July and August being added
> later to commemorate Julius Caesar and Augustus.   September - December were
> then no longer the seventh to tenth months.   The year ending during March
> ended with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, at least in Britain/Ireland.
> This calendar was introduced in 1582 but was not adopted until much later in
> some countries (1752 in Britain, 1918 in Russia).

Well, this is actually not completely true.

Originally, the old Lunar calendar in Rome had 10 months, but it was a
while (several centuries) before the "civilized" Roman antiquity. After
the calendar changed to Solar system, they started counting 12 months,
adding the January and the February at the _end_ of the year, since the
year started in March. So, in the new solar calendar the February was the
last month in the year. That's why the additonal day every 4 years is
added to the February, not to the December :))

July and August always were there, but they were called Quinctilis and
Sextilis respectively (from 5th and 6th month). After the death of the
Caesar, the Quinctilis has been renamed to Iulius (July) and after the
death of the emperor Augustus, the Sextilis has been renamed to Augustus.

Later, after the case I described before, the consular year in the Rome
started to begin in 1st January, but old names of months, derived from
numerals, have been kept by daily tradition and Roman religion.

Then, at 45 before Christ, comes the Julian calendar. That is: the year
starts at 1st January, and is 12 months long. The lengths of months are:
31 for the January, 28 for the February, 31 for the March, 30 for the
April, 31 for the May, 30 for the June, 31 for the July, 30 for the
August, 31 for the September, 30 for the October, 31 for the November and
30 for the December. Each 4 years they decided to add a 29th day to the
February, which was still the last month of the year for the Roman
religion, and these were pontifices (clergy, less or more) who officially
decided things on calendar.

After the death of the emperor August, the Sextilis was renamed to
Augustus and it got 31 days, to not be shorter (= worse :-)) than July,
which has already been renamed as a memorial of the Caesar. Following that
the number of days in September, October, November and December has been
changed to 30,31,30,31 respectively.

And this is exactly the same system we're using until now (i.e. more than
2000 years). The correction done at XVIth century was very small and it
corrected the bug :-) in the Julian calendar that caused the calendar to
be late 1 day after each 128 years. After that bug has been fixed :-) our
calendar (called Gregorian)  is late 1 day after each 3000 years counted
since 1582. 

Gtx,

--
Konrad M.Kokoszkiewicz
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