[HN Gopher] Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion
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Julius Caesar's Year of Confusion
Author : rntn
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-02-28 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Nobody ever explained in school that the reason the numbers in
| the names of September, October, November, and December (7, 8, 9,
| 10) don't match up to their actual month number (9, 10, 11, 12)
| is because the Roman calendar began in March, not January. If you
| start from March, they line up perfectly. It also explains why
| the seemingly arbitrary choice of storing the extra leap day in
| February makes sense--just tack it onto the end!
| williamdclt wrote:
| Also makes sense to start the year when the weather start to
| get warmer, rather than the middle of winter
| pavlov wrote:
| And the name March comes from Mars, the god of war, because
| it's the month when military campaigns can restart after the
| winter break.
| vojev wrote:
| March became the new year again throughout much of the West in
| the Middle Ages as it moved to the feast of the Annunciation.
| March 25th was New Year's Day in England until the Gregorian
| calendar was adopted in the 1750s!
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What's "weird" is i think we were taught in school that July
| and August were added by the Caesars (with their names),
| causing the 2 month shift you mention. Now i wonder where that
| idea came from, after this neat article.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I was also taught this.
|
| I wonder if it has something to do with this, from the
| article:
|
| > On Sosigenes' advice, Caesar added another two never-
| before-seen months to the year 46BC, one of 33 days and one
| 34, to bring the calendar in line with the Sun. The additions
| made the year the longest in history at 445 days long, with
| 15 months.
|
| The two additional months were a one-time-only thing for that
| year, but I can see wires getting crossed and having that be
| a thing that was repeated for a while.
|
| July and August were never added, though, simply renamed.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's weird our calendar is named after actual people. The 1st
| French Republic briefly reversed this, but their solution
| didn't have staying power,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Mon.
| ..
|
| I wish everyone on HN a happy "Windy"! :)
|
| edit: Oh a cool fact in this tangent: the astronomer who
| discovered Planet 7 _attempted_ to name it after a human--his
| patron, the British monarch George III. That would be an
| entertaining alternate history if it had gone that way!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Name
| cyberax wrote:
| Many languages do have meaningful names for months. E.g. in
| many Slavic countries:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar
| bee_rider wrote:
| We would insist it is named after George Washington
| instead, if that name's stuck. The whole situation would be
| insufferable I think.
| erehweb wrote:
| Also of interest - the Senate offered to rename November for
| Tiberius, but he declined, saying "What will you do if you
| have 13 Caesars?" (Cited from:
| https://www.cointalk.com/threads/welcome-to-
| tiberius%E2%80%9...)
| hcs wrote:
| At the other end of that scale is Commodus, who wanted
| every month named after one of his 12 names: Lucius,
| Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus,
| Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, and Pius
| notahacker wrote:
| Apparently they _were_ renamed (from the no longer accurate
| Quintilius and Sextilius). Why they didn 't get around to
| renaming the other numerical months, I don't know...
| o11c wrote:
| The part that rarely gets mentioned - back then, months were
| only for the 'active' part of the year. The winter, when
| everybody stayed home, did not belong to any month at all.
| tzs wrote:
| [Deleted something that duplicated part of the article]
|
| Google tells me that Romans did celebrate birthdays. I'm
| curious what they did when they were on the calendar that
| omitted the days between December and March. Surely some people
| were born on off calendar days.
|
| Did they just count the days of the off calendar time? Move the
| celebration to some time in the non-sucky part of the year?
| gregschlom wrote:
| Yep, that's actually all mentioned in the article :)
| Nition wrote:
| How did we end up with the year starting in January? If you've
| got eight months and they're often named like that - e.g. "oct"
| for the 8th month - and you decide to add a couple for the time
| you're not counting during winter, wouldn't you add them at the
| end and say the year still starts in March? Or is that exactly
| what they did and we changed the end-of-year point layer (the
| article doesn't say)? If so, why did we change it?
| throwaway396276 wrote:
| https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-the-new-year-
| start...
|
| Tldr; There were many changes, with the last change
| introduced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The American
| colonies didn't adopt it until 1752
| Nition wrote:
| Thanks, so that does seem to confirm that when the Romans
| added Jan/Feb, they put them at the beginning of the year
| right from the start. Unfortunately it still doesn't really
| have an answer to why they didn't put them at the end,
| except that it fits with the chosen name (Janus = God of
| all beginnings).
| antognini wrote:
| There were different standards in Europe during the middle
| ages and early modern period. Some places retained a date
| closer to the Roman New Year around the vernal equinox. These
| places used the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25). Other
| places (usually in the north) inherited a date closer to the
| winter solstice and so they used the Feast of the
| Circumcision (January 1).
|
| As trade between countries grew during the early modern
| period countries began to standardize on the Feast of the
| Circumcision. England was a holdout, though and if you look
| at record from the first half of the 18th century, they will
| often include both years for dates between Jan 1 and March
| 25. The British Parliament formally adopted "Circumcision
| dates" to come into agreement with the continent in 1751.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750
| notahacker wrote:
| On the other hand, I did remember from school that January was
| named after Janus, the two faced Roman god of beginnings, so
| explaining the year started in March might have resulted in
| more questions than answers!
| jcranmer wrote:
| The Roman calendar started in January at least as far back as
| the second century BC, and my understanding is that our sources
| are inconsistent as to who changed it, when it was changed, and
| why it was changed. Also, most of our sources are writing well
| after the change occurred (generally, they date to first
| century AD). (This is why the Julian and Gregorian calendars
| start on January 1, because the calendar they're based on did
| as well! Although lots of European countries did decide for
| much of the past 2000 years to start the year on other days
| like December 25 or March 25 or Easter).
|
| This gives me a vibe that a lot of the tradition of the Roman
| calendar numbering is based on a "just-so" story that is made
| up to explain an interesting fact without being based on any
| actual evidence.
| nemo wrote:
| It's worth noting that the reason the calends had slipped so
| badly is because it was Julius Caesar's job as pontifex maximus
| to handle the periodic updates to the calends that kept it in
| sync with the solar year. But he was too busy fighting in Gaul
| and having his adventures to bother with it for years, so the
| calendar slipped into chaos due to his mismanagement. He then
| went on to fix his screw-up, but he didn't just decide to fix the
| calendar, he was in a position where he'd screwed up so long he
| had to fix it.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| So a staunch supporter of Julius Caesar would say that he made
| it so bad that he had to fix it. A true political innovation
| usrusr wrote:
| Strategically held off automating away his job until he
| secured a new position
| josefx wrote:
| He could have just added a few months to the current year and
| would have been done with it.
| staunch wrote:
| Caesar procrastinated so hard he changed time itself!
|
| (This is funny, but I'd be interested to read a source on how
| true this is. Presumably there were priests that could take
| care of such things. He took care of lots of other Roman
| business while he was in Gaul.)
| alephnerd wrote:
| Can't beat Canadian Prime Minister and Founding Father John
| MacDonald blacking out while drunk during the Fenian Raids
| (Irish American civil war vets fighting for Irish freedom by
| attempting to invade British North America as a bargaining
| chip) in the 1860s [0]
|
| [0] - https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/sir-john-a-passed-
| out-dr...
| hr0m wrote:
| Ha, a proof that by watching YouTube videos you learn something.
| This was covered by one of my favorite series on YouTube. Here is
| the particular video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-R35DSSZY
| gregw134 wrote:
| Historia Civilis is pure gold for history enjoyers.
| StrauXX wrote:
| One of the best (history) creators on the platform in my
| opinion! His recent video on the history of work was also quite
| interesting.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't think his recent work video was good at all, namely
| that he falls into the same trap of idolizing days of yore
| while thinking about the current day realistically, a form of
| recency bias known as rosy retrospection. In short, serfs'
| (and other pre-Industrial peoples') "free time" was not free
| at all, it was spent doing other sorts of manual labor that
| wasn't their primary work but nevertheless needed to be done,
| similar to the chores we have today but much more strenuous.
| I'll add these comments on reddit that serve as much more of
| a realistic view of work back then [0] [1] [2].
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16vgh2l/the_hist
| ory...
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b8ovr/iv
| e_s...
|
| [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28q7l5/ho
| w_m...
| irrational wrote:
| We should get started on the Y56k problem.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I love that one of the first programming exercises you do as a
| student is to program a leap year calculator. Most students will
| forget or not know that every 400 years is a leap year, and I
| think the valuable lesson there is that even though code may seem
| trivially simple, it may have logical errors based on faulty
| assumptions that will bite you.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's a good lesson - and the really proper take-away is to
| reject NIH tendencies and just use something like tzdatabase or
| language functions - your 400 year example isn't comprehensive
| - there are a series of exceptions beyond the 400 year one and,
| the best bit, they may be revised without warning. Use a
| library - let someone dedicated to the problem handle it.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Fun fact, expanding the Spain/England remark of misaligned
| calendars from the article:
|
| Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same date, but not the same
| day. They died 10 days apart. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.dw.com/en/shakespeare-and-cervantes-two-
| geniuses...
| j-bos wrote:
| Historia Civilis has a great video explaining how Caeser used the
| longest year to his advantage in war:
| https://youtu.be/fD-R35DSSZY
| usrusr wrote:
| Feels as if only a few generations later they got bored of all
| that predictability and introduced the weird algorithm of
| determining the date of Easter to spice things up again.
| mannyv wrote:
| Back in the day the Consuls were in charge of the calendar, and
| some of them paid more attention to that particular job than
| others.
|
| Precise time really started with the railroads. Before that,
| well, you got there when you got there.
| antognini wrote:
| Shameless plug, but for anyone interested in learning more, I do
| a podcast on the history of astronomy and did an episode on the
| Roman calendar:
|
| https://songofurania.com/episode/024
|
| One of the interesting things about their calendar is that
| because the role of weekdays was much weaker in Roman society,
| they could actually reuse calendars from year to year. Wealthy
| people would paint a calendar on the wall of their home and there
| were calendars literally etched into stone in public places.
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(page generated 2024-02-28 23:00 UTC)