Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"

by J. F. Blake; Camille Flammarion

The first of these ten months was called Mars after the name of the god from whom Romulus pretended to have descended. The name of the second, Aprilis, was derived from the word aperire, to open, because it was at the time that the earth opened; or it may be, from Aphrodite, one of the names of Venus, the supposed grandmother of Æneas. The third month was consecrated to Maïa, the mother of Mercury. The names of the six others expressed simply their order—Quintilis, the fifth; Sextilis, the sixth; September, the seventh; and so on.

Numa added two months to the ten of Romulus; one took the name of Januarius, from Janus: the name of the other was derived either from the sacrifices (februalia), by which the faults committed during the course of the past year were expiated, or from Februo, the god of the dead, to which the last month was consecrated. The year then had 355 days.

These Roman months have become our own, and hence a special interest attaches to the consideration of their origin, and the explanation of the manner in which they have been modified and supplemented. Each of them was divided into unequal parts, by the days which were known as the calends, nones, and ides. The calends were invariably fixed to the first day of each month; the nones came on the 5th or 7th, and the ides the 13th or 15th.

The Romans, looking forward, as children do to festive days, to the fête which came on these particular days, named each day by its distance from the next that was following. Immediately after the calends of a month, the dates were referred to the nones, each day being called seven, six, five, and so on days before the nones; on the morrow of the nones they counted to the ides; and so the days at the end of the month always bore the name of the calends of the month following.

To complete the confusion the 2nd day before the fête was called the 3rd, by counting the fête itself as the 1st, and so they added one throughout to the number that we should now say expressed our distance from a certain date.

Since there were thus ten days short in each year, it was soon found necessary to add them on, so a supplementary month was created, which was called Mercedonius. This month, by another anomaly, was placed between the 23rd and 24th of February. Thus, after February 23rd, came 1st, 2nd, 3rd of Mercedonius; and then after the dates of this supplementary month were gone through, the original month was taken up again, and they went on with the 24th of February.

And finally, to complete the medley, the priests who had the charge of regulating this complex calendar, acquitted themselves as badly as they could; by negligence or an arbitrary use of their power they lengthened or shortened the year without any uniform rule. Often, indeed, they consulted in this nothing but their own convenience, or the interests of their friends.

The disorder which this license had introduced into the calendar proceeded so far that the months had changed from the seasons, those of winter being advanced to the autumn, those of the autumn to the summer. The fêtes were celebrated in seasons different from those in which they were instituted, so that of Ceres happened when the wheat was in the blade, and that of Bacchus when the raisins were green. Julius Cæsar, therefore, determined to establish a solar year according to the known period of revolution of the sun, that is 365 days and a quarter. He ordained that each fourth year a day should be intercalated in the place where the month Mercedonius used to be inserted, i.e. between the 23rd and 24th of February.

The 6th of the calends of March in ordinary years was the 24th of February; it was called sexto-kalendas. When an extra day was put in every fourth year before the 24th, this was a second 6th day, and was therefore called bissexto-kalendas, whence we get the name bissextile, applied to leap year.

But it was necessary also to bring back the public fêtes to the seasons they ought to be held in: for this purpose Cæsar was obliged to insert in the current year, 46 B.C. (or 708 A.U.C.), two intercalary months beside the month Mercedonius. There was, therefore, a year of fifteen months divided into 445 days, and this was called the year of confusion.