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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��varies among different nations, both as to the time of its commencement and its various sub-divisions.
As 365 is not an even multiple of twelve, of course to have twelve months in the year, they must consist of an unequal number of days. Some arrangement must also be made to provide for the fractional part of a day in each solar year. For it will at once be seen that a true solar year can not be measured by any whole number of equal months, weeks, or days. But in the civil year it is con- venient that the year should begin with the month and the day. It is there- fore necessary that the days be so ar- ranged in the months as to always have 365 days in every civil year. The odd hours and fractions of hours must go unreckoned till they amount to a day, and then that day must in some way be added to the year.
The civil calendar of all modern European nations has been adopted from that of the Romans. Let us examine and see how the Roman cal- endar has been constructed, and its various changes from time to time. The ancient Roman year commenced with March, as is indicated by the names of the months, September, Oc- tober, November, and December, be- ing, as their names indicate, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months of the year. July and Au- gust were also originally called Quin- tilis and Sextilis, meaning the fifth and sixth months of the year.
It is said that under Romulus the Roman year consisted of only ten months, commencing with March and closing with December. We are not fully informed how he divided the days, so as to get his year into these ten months. Numa is said to have added the two months, January and February, the first before March and the other after December. But after a time February was transposed and put in after January, and thus became the last month of the year which com- menced with March ; and an addi-
��tional month was occasionally added in February to make the lunar months correspond to the civil year, and to provide for the odd days and fractions of a day not provided for in the regu- lar months of the year. As February was the last month of the year for a long period of time, all the additions were made to that month, in order to make the civil correspond with the solar year. But so careless did the government or the pontiffs of Rome become in adding the additional, or intercalary months and days, that the civil equinox finally differed from the solar by some three months. The civil year had got ahead of the solar, so that the winter months came in the fall. And so, in like degree, all the seasons came out of place.
Finally Julius Csesar set about re- forming the calendar. He abolished the use of the lunar year with the in- tercalary month, and regulated the civil year entirely by the sun. With the assistance of Sosigenes, the astron- omer, he fixed the mean length of the year at three hundred sixty-five and one fourth days, and declared that the ordinary year should consist of three hundred and sixty-five days, but that every fourth year should consist of three hundred and sixty-six days ; had his year begin with January 1st, and his months alternated between thirty and thirty-one days ; January, March, May, July, September, and November had thirty-one, and all the others thirty each, except February, which was to have twenty-nine in ordinary years and thirty every fourth year. The fifth and sixth months of the year, reckoning from March, had been named July and August in honor of the two Caesars, Julius, who revised the calendar, and Augustus, who was to be his successor. The first Julian year began January 1, the forty-sixth year before the birth of Christ, and the seven hundred and eighth from the foundation of Rome, which was the era from which the Romans, for many centuries before and after Christ, com- puted their time.
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