Menoducational; In Search of a Date

I SAID, "FEBRUARY!!!"

Just in case you missed the fact that the calendars had to turn today. Phew. Managed to get through January by doing very little to agitate it. The great thing about February is that it is short and soon it will be March and that will mean spring. In theory.

Da Phenny ruminated on this short month in his comment to me here on Monday's post. It got me thinking - and researching! 

Who in their right mind would invent a month which would be two and a half days short of the average and then add another one every four years? The Romans, of course. I delved into the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Thought Co., and that great centre of Q&A debate, StackExchange. Not every answer provided there is necessarily accurate or even correct, but one can glean lots of interesting points of view. 

Most of us are aware that there was the Julian calendar before there was the current Gregorian version, but it kind of gets a bit muddy beyond that. What became clear is that there is a fair bit of academic variance as to the true origins of date-keeping and naming, but here is my summary of events. (Bear in mind this is a look purely at the dating system devised in Western culture; in India, the concept of dividing time and naming those bits had been going for quite a few centuries already. A whole different set of maths going on there.)

Initially, all that was known were the seasons, and they were known as spring, summer, autumn and winter. (Or variations of that according to language and region.)

Those who worked the land knew them and prepared as was appropriate.

There came a time (it is unclear exactly when - cuz there was no calendar note made for it 😉) when it was felt there could be a rhythm to the passing of time which might be recorded. The Romans marked the start of each month with 'kalend', the first day. (You got that, right? 'Kalend' - noting the passing of first days is to make a kalend-er... tsk, don't spoon feed 'em YAM...) There were eight/nine days to their week - the fourth or sixth of each month being known as the 'nones' (pron. 'knowns') because they were the ninth day back from the 'ides', which were the thirteenth or fifteenth days of each month. (Keeping up?)

The year was based upon the lunar cycle and this gave the result of 355 days. The months, then, were split at 31 days and some at 30 - it looked like this:

Martius: 31 days
Aprilius: 30 days
Maius: 31 days
Junius: 30 days
Quintilis: 31 days
Sextilis: 31 days
September: 30 days
October: 31 days
November: 30 days
December: 30 day

Note that they ran out of names after the fourth month, so just named them according to their number - quintilis is fifth and sextilis is sixth, you can guess the rest.

The Romans though, bless 'em, were allergic to even numbers. So the blokes with brains in those days before a full year was realised, decided to make the months into 29s and 31s. This shortened their year even further. The winter months did not have any recognition because, basically, no work could be done in them anyway so why bother? However, they did want to keep to the 355 days. Then there was the growing recognition that the sun had something to do with the passing the days so this stretched time in any given year - otherwise, the seasons didn't work out properly. How to do this? Add a couple. Thus Janvuar and Feruarius were tacked on at the end. 

By Bauglir - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

January is named for the god Janus, promoting arts and peace, and February for the time of cleansing - 'spring cleaning'!!! For the Romans it was about spiritual cleansing and ritual dedication, honouring the forefathers and all that; so it is not that surprising, then, that the Roman Catholic church adopted this time for 'Lent'. However, there is also a connection to the day which became known as Valentine's day. Read here for more on that.

The problem was, the seasons still kept slipping out of sync. So the tacked on month which was only there for cleaning and dumping anyway, got shortened and stretched according to need. Then there was the occasional year where catch up was needed to balance out the weather, so an 'intercalary' month would appear. Yup. Thirteen months. The days of the week were only referred to by letters, A - H and combinations thereof.

"Be quiet! The Roman calendar is the most perfect yet devised. It has twelve months."
"Except when it has thirteen, as this year."
"And all of these months have either thirty-one or twenty-nine days."
"Except Februarius, which has twenty-eight. Only this year, according to you, it has only twenty-four."

 ~ Steven Saylor Murder on the Appian Way, p. 191.

Fast forward a few rather dodgy 'years' to when knowledge from the East filtered through and much more mathematical and astronomical understanding. Weeks were formalised to seven days, each given a name we would now recognise, and the months again adjusted to the lengths we have now, with the dreaded even number of 30 sticking to four of them. However, there was still the issue of needing to keep things to 365, with only a bit of catch up every so often. February drew the short straw again. Probably because it IS the end of winter, is basically the month for clearing out, and is generally a month most folks just want to get through as quickly as possible to reach the month of spring and daffs.

Then, of course, the cosmos doesn't know anything about these little numbskulls on Earth who want things to stay always the same, so there is still the need to 'reset the clock' as it were. Thus we have the extra day every fourth year.

So here we are, in the butt end of the Roman year. This repawt brought to you by the Office of Wellness and Concerns - being as how we are concerned with the passing of days!