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Thread: Why Leap-month/ year, What's the Rule??
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[quote=PIKADIREN,382357]Months Originally Romans had ten months in the year of either 30 or 31 days. The winter period seems to have been without formal months and the year began in the Spring with March as winter ended and crops were planted. The ten month year is still recalled in the names of some of our months - September, October, November, and December come from Latin words for seven, eight, nine and ten. Around 715BC the twelve month calendar was introduced, based on the phases of the Moon. It takes on average 29.5 days between one new moon and the next and so a twelve-month lunar year lasts 354 days but an extra day was added because even numbers were unlucky. The twelve months had between 28 and 31 days in each to make the year last 355 days. February was the shortest month with 28 days and every other year a whole extra month - called Mercedonius which alternated between 22 days and 23 days - was inserted after the 23rd day of February to try to keep the calendar in line with the solar year of approximately 365 days. At the end of Mercedonius the remaining five days of February were taken, so Mercedonius was followed by the 24th of February. But the arithmetic did not quite work - the system gives an average duration for the year of 366.25 days - and the calendar slowly drifted away from the seasons once more. Inserting an extra period to correct the calendar is called an intercalation. The situation was made worse because the calendar was not a publicly available document. It was guarded by the priests whose job it was to make it work and determine the dates of religious holidays, festivals, and the days when business could and could not be conducted. Through both carelessness and abuse, the intercalations were not made even according to the flawed rules that had been laid down. By the time Gaius Julius Caesar took power in the mid 40s BC the calendar was in a mess and he decided to make a major reform. Indeed, he called in an Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes to advise him. As a result, the lunar year was abandoned in favour of a solar year lasting 365.25 days, and a total of 90 extra days were added to the year 46BC to bring the seasons back into line and set the spring equinox on the 25th day of March. Caesar also decreed that the year would in future start with January - although it had done so more many centuries, some parts of the empire were reverting to March for the start. And the 1st of January in the IV year of Caesar's consulship otherwise known as 709AUC or as we would call it 45BC was the start of the modern era of the Calendar.[/quote]
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