[3621] The writers of the article CALENDARIUM in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (i, 344), who assume that Caesar’s calendar came into operation on the 1st of January, 45 B.C., argue that his motive for making the year begin on that day ‘was probably the desire to gratify the superstition of the Romans by causing the first year (sic) of the reformed calendar to fall on the day of the new moon ... the mean new moon occurred at Rome on the 1st of January, 45 B.C., at 6h 16′ p.m. In this way alone can be explained the phrase used by Macrobius (Sat., i, 14, 13): annum civilem Caesar habitis ad lunam dimensionibus constitutum edicto palam posito publicavit.’ Holzapfel, on the other hand, shows (Philologus, xlix, 1890, p. 87) that ‘Macrobius’s words, if one considers the context, only imply that Caesar made no alteration in the place of Kalends, Nones, and Ides, which originally had reference to the lunar phases’. See also Th. Mommsen (Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar, 1859, p. 277, n. 2) and Matzat (Hermes, xxiii, 1888, pp. 61-3). Matzat’s arguments were directed against A. Mommsen, who assumed (Philologus, xlv, 1886, pp. 411-38) that the new moon had occurred on the 2nd of January 45 B.C., and accordingly argued that Caesar’s calendar began on that day. Mr. J. K. Fotheringham (Journal of Philology, No. 57, 1903, pp. 98-9) affirms that ‘there was a new moon on the 2nd of January, 45 B.C., which Caesar may have calculated for the 1st, and there was another new moon on the 1st of March’. I have myself calculated the date of the new moon in question, first by reckoning back the number of lunations from the new moon of January 6, 1856, which occurred at 11.17 p.m., taking the length of a lunation to be 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2·84 seconds, and allowing 2 hours for the secular acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; and, secondly, by the method explained in Augustus De Morgan’s Book of Almanacs, 1851, pp. xiv-xv. Both methods have led me to the same result, namely, that there was a new moon on January 2, 45 B.C.
[3622] Hermes, xxiii, 1888, pp. 57-8.
[3623] Sat., i, 13, § 19.—dies ille quo abundare annum diximus eorum est permissus arbitrio qui fastis praeerant, uti, cum vellent, intercalaretur, dum modo eam in medio Terminaliorum vel mensis intercalaris ita locarent ut a suspecto die celebritatem averteret nundinarum. Atque hoc est quod quidam veterum retulerunt non solum mensem apud Romanos verum etiam diem intercalarem fuisse.
[3624] Ueber die vierjährigen Sonnenkreise der Alten, 1863, p. 1.
[3625] Hermes, xxiii, 1888, p. 56.
[3626] Röm. Chron., p. 328; Philologus, xlix, 1890, pp. 66-7, 72, 77.
[3627] Hermes, xxiii, 1888, p. 57.
[3628] Hist. Rom., xlviii, 33, § 4.
[3629] Philologus, xlix, 1890, p. 76.
[3630] Hermes, xxiii, 1888, p. 57.