Tag: Julian Calendar

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The Month of Love Roman Months April 15th

Roman Months, and April the Month of Love – Table from Wikipedia

April was Aphrodite’s month.  The goddess of love and beauty.  Hence, the month of love.  It is also National Couple Appreciation Month! (‘National Couple Appreciation Month was founded in 2010 by Blissful Escapes to, in the words of the company, “encourage couples to do something special to re-enforce and celebrate their relationship.”’ Quote taken from this site.). But first, the new section of:

On This Day

1738 –George Frideric Handel’s Serse, has its premiere performance in London, England. From 1723 Handel lived in a House at 23, Brook Street which is in Mayfair. The House became a museum. Jimi Hendrix lived next door. And so now it is the Handel Hendrix House.

Handel Hendrix Museum Photo by K Flude

See my post on Hendrix in London.

1755 – Samuel Johnson published his famous ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’.

He had a team of clerks in his attic in Bolt Court. They wrote down his definitions and illustrations of their use. He was often quite naughty in including funny, rude or idiosyncratic definitions. For example, a lexicographer was ‘A writer of dictionaries. A harmless drudge.’ A Second Marriage was: ‘ A triumph of hope over experience.’ Oats. ”A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’ The innovation of his dictionary was that the definitions came with copious illustrations of a word’s use from well-known authors. While researching he borrowed books from friends. When he eventually returned them they were marked with lots of underlining and annotation in the margins.

Dr Johnstone’s House in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, Photo K Flude
Statue of Dr Johnstone, in Fleet Street Photo K Flude
Dr Johnstone’s famous Cat Photo K flude

1912 –  Titanic sinks at 2:20 a.m. This was 2 hours and 40 minutes after she hit the iceberg. 1514 people were lost of 2,224.

1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes. Its development involved decades of work over 2 continents, but it was extracted by a team from the University of Toronto in 1921.

1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated. The Imperial War Museum writes: ‘Thousands of bodies lay unburied around the camp and some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food, water or basic sanitation. Many were suffering from typhus, dysentery and starvation.… Nearly 14,000 died after the liberation.’

1989 – 97 Liverpool fans packed into the Hillsborough Stadium, were crushed to death watching the FA Cup Semi-final. 766 were injured. The Police tried to cover up the events, and the press blamed the Liverpool fans, particularly Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun.

Roman Months

I have spoken about the Roman Calendar in previous posts. Today, I’m concentrating on the Months. The Romans wrote about a ‘legendary’ calendar, set up by Romulus when he founded Rome. It consisted of 10 months of 30 and 31 days followed by a winter period not divided into months. This allowed them to extend the year so that it fitted into the Celestial cycle. The year began in March, suitable names were given to March, April, May and June.

Having given names to June the Romans gave up and the next 6 months were given numbers from 5th month to 10th month as in the diagram above. The Calendar was not well regulated and the months eventually began to lose their integration with the seasons, and needed reform.

photo of november calendar
Photo by Manasvita S on Unsplash

The Calendar was reformed several times. January and February were added by the legendary Numa Pompilius about 713 BC replacing the monthless winter period. But, Julius Caesar undertook the major reform in 46BC. This was the so-called ‘Year of Confusion’. This first year was 445 days long. This is how far out of sync the Calendar had got. The Julian Calendar realigned the calendar to the seasons.

The Year began on January 1st, with 365 days, 12 months and a 4 year leap year cycle. This held sway until the 16th Century when a further reform was ordered by Pope Gregory as the year is not exactly 365.25 days long. It was not adopted in the UK until 1752 when we lost 11 days to align ourselves with Europe.

More on the Ides and the Kalendes of the month here. For more on Numa Pompilius or see my post.

First published in November 2022.  Republished April 2025, and 2026 when On This Day was added.

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Beware the Ides of March March 15th

shows an image of Brutus stabbing Caesar with 'funny' bubbles: Caesar says 'Brutus, whats that loud pelting noise on the roof' and Brutus replies, about to stab Julius Caesar 'Hail, Caesar'
Beware the Ides of March – With Apologies.Image from Facebook

Beware the Ides of March

SOOTHSAYER: Caesar!
CAESAR: Ha! Who calls?
CASCA: Bid every noise be still; peace yet again!
CAESAR: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry ‘ Caesar!’ Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.
SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR: What man is that?
BRUTUS: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
CAESAR: Set him before me; let me see his face.
CASSIUS: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.
CAESAR: What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.
SOOTHSAYER: Beware the Ides of March.
CAESAR: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar and the Ides of March, 44 BC

The Ides of March is the 15th of March. The day Julius Caesar didn’t take the warning that might have saved his life. You might suggest he got what was coming to the first populist Dictator. But any study of Roman History will find many precursors to Caesar in Roman and Greek History. Among populists, I rank Caesar with Napoleon a Dictators who was, personally, an intelligent, rational man. They, in some ways, ruled ‘wisely’ but were nonetheless willing to sacrifice millions of people for their own personal ambition.

Warning from history – Assassination is not the Answer!

Today, the world is faced with the populists who are geniuses only in their own minds. I know, we as humans, might think, if only X would drop dead, how much better it would be? Brutus, being an honourable man, took action upon his thought. But, as often is the case, what seemed the ‘right thing’ to do, turned out to be a disaster. The plotters were trying to save the Roman Republic, but the murder destroyed the Republic.

So, still those assassinary thoughts, read this article in ‘History Today’ about the impact of Julius Caesar’s murder. Do everything you can but use democratic means to defeat egotists to whom truth means nothing. In my opinion this is the major problem for humanity, it seems we do not know how to stop homicidal maniacs (like Hitler) causing war without needing to fight a war to stop them. We do not have a method of peaceful mass rebellion. Perhaps Gandhi came closest but then he was working against a system that was not a dictatorship. (I mentioned Gandhi in ‘On This Day’ on my post here.

Ides of March

Now, what the heck are or indeed is the Ides of March?

A Roman month was divided into three, first the Kalends, then the Nones and finally the Ides. These three days were the important days of the month. The Kalends is the 1st of the Month. The Nones the 7th of the Month, And the Ides the Fifteenth. It is said to go back to the early days of Rome and a lunar calendar. The Kalends being the first tiny sliver of a crescent moon a couple of days after the New Moon. The Nones the first quarter of the Moon and the Ides was the full moon. To me, as a way of dividing a month it is very lopsided. The cycle of the moon is 29 days not 15. So the tripartite division divides up the first half of the month, and leave the second half undivided.

Debts were supposed to be paid on the Kalends and that is where we get our word calendar from. These public calendars were called Fasti. This is the name of Ovid’s great Almanac Poem, the Fasti, which I often quote from.

Kalendar

This is a very bad photograph of a drawing by Herbert E Duncan Jr of a 1st Century Calendar
This is a very bad photograph of a drawing by Herbert E Duncan Jr of a 1st Century Calendar

How was it used? When talking about a day in the future month you might say I’ll meet you on the 5th day before the Kalends. I’ve never really understood this system, despite a few attempts, until I saw this drawing of a Roman Calendar. You’ll have to read this closely.

The first column, on the left, with the letters from D to H then A – H. This is a recurring cycle of 8 market days, running in tandem with Kalends, Nones etc.. This gives an 8 day week.

Now reading across the top line in capitals: DKMARTNP. So the D is the 4 day of the 8 day ‘market week’. The second column begins with the Letter K for Kalends, then MART for March. So it’s the Kalends of March. Then NP which means this day is a day for public festivals.

Back to the second column. Below the K for Kalends, the days are counted down to the upcoming Nones. So the next one after Kalends is VI, meaning the 6th day before the March Nones. Then V, IIII, III. There is no II because PR means the day before Nones. Below and to the right of the PR are the letters NON which is, as you might hope, is short for Nones.

In the second column below this is the number VIII which means the next day is the 8th day before the Ides of March. The fragment of stone from which this drawing comes does not continue down to the Ides, unfortunately.

Complicated, huh? It gets worse. The third column has a series of letters in it: F C C C NP NON F C C. We already know that the NON is short for Nones, The F means it’s a fastus, a permissible day when legal action can be taken. (the plural of Fastus is Fasti.) The C means C comitialis which on fasti days the Roman people could hold assemblies. (see my post for more on the curiae).

Market and Public Days

We have already seen that NP marks days for public festivals. An N would mean days when political and judicial actions were prohibited, although there is not one here. The small unreadable text to the right is information, I believe, about holidays and historic events to be marked in the calendar. This is, in fact, a Roman Stone Almanac.

This confusing system survived Caesar’s major calendrical reforms. He transformed the Roman calendar, which was rotten at the core. He re-aligned with an almost accurate calculation of the time the Sun takes to circle the earth. (or the other way around!) This is known as the Julian Calendar.

But the Kalends, Nones, and Ides he left intact and it survived until Constantine the Great got rid of them. They were replaced with the familiar 4 fold division of the month. So, for the first time, you could work 24/7.

Glad you are not Roman?

For more about Constantine’s Weeks look at my post here

For Caesar’s Calendrical reforms look at this post

least the ones I saw.)

On This Day

493 – Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, was slain by Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, while the two kings were feasting together. Odoacer was a mercenary General for the Romans, but seized the Throne from the child Emperor Romulus Augustulus, who ruled for only 10 months. Theodoric took over and ruled an Empire centred on Italy from 496 to 526. Both Kings followed the Arian version of Christianity, although generally did not persecute the Catholic Tradition.

Theodoric was, more powerful than the later Roman Emperors and had good relations with the Roman Senate, which continued in operation. Later in his rule, that relationship broke down. This lead to Theodoric arresting Boethius for treason. While awaiting execution, Boethius wrote ‘On The Consolation of Philosophy’. Often called the last great literary work of the Western Roman Empire. Amongst many translations into English are those by King Alfred the Great, Geoffrey Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I. Boethius was executed in 523

1493 – Christopher Columbus arrived in Castille, back from the journey that changed the world. He made landfall in the Bahamas on 12th October 1492, ending what became known as the pre-Columbian Age (aka pre-contact era). The voyage began the era of exploration that turned the world into a global entity, but also bringing in its wake horrific genocide of indigenous peoples.

1877 – First Cricket Test Match between England and Australia, held at Melbourne which the Aussies won by 45 runs.

1909 – Selfridge’s opened on Oxford Street

1927 – The first Oxford v Cambridge Women’s Boat Race took place in Oxford on the Isis. The Isis is what posh folk call the River Thames as it flows passed the University Town. In Latin the Thames is called the Tamesis. And a conceit grew up at the University that the River was called the Isis until it was joined by the River Thame at Dorchester, where the conjoined river was called the Tamesis.

The Boat Race was won by Oxford. Strangely, the boats did not row at the same time. On the first leg they were judged by the style of their rowing, and on the second by the speed. The judges could not agree on the style scores, so in the end the decision was given to Oxford on account of being the faster of the two boats.

2024 Revised March 2025, On This Day added 2026

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May Day May 1st

May Day – Bringing the Maypole, Bedfordshire. Image from ‘Romantic Britain’

Maypoles were often stored during the year. A few days before May Day they were repainted, and bedecked with May Garlands – mostly made from Hawthorn. The Maypole used in London in 1660 was 134 feet high. Tall straight trees were used, sometimes of Larch, and they might be spliced together to get the requisite height. John Stow says that each parish in London had their own Maypole, or combined with a neighbouring Parish. The main Maypole was on the top of Cornhill, in Leadenhall Street. It was stored under the eves of St Andrew’s Church, which became known as St Andrew’s Undershaft as a result.

Padstow May Day Festival

Padstow holds, perhaps, the most famous May Day festival on May 1st. It feels feels very ‘pagan’ or do I mean it is fuelled by an enormous amount of drink?

Here is a video, watch until you see the ‘obby ‘orse and the teaser dancing.

Why May Eve?

The celebrations begin on May Eve because the Celtic calendar starts the day at Dusk. This seems strange to us who, perversely, ‘start’ our day at Midnight just after everyone has gone to bed! The other choice, and maybe the most logical is Dawn. But Dawn and Dusk are difficult to fix. Midnight was chosen by Julius Caesar when he created the Julian Calendar. Midnight has the virtue of being a fixed metric, being half way between Dawn and Dusk. From the Celtic point of view. The day ends when the Sun goes down over the western horizon. So the end of the old day, is the beginning of the new day. Makes sense?

For Walpurgis Nacht see my post on April 30th here: walpurgis-nacht-april-30th/

Beltane

Celebrations centred around the Bonfire. The day was sacred to the fire God Belenus (Gaulish: Belenos, Belinos, British Belinus, Bel, or Beli), and May Day was called Beltane. Bonfires continued to be a part of the celebration into the 16th Century, and in places until the 20th Century. According to folklore tradition, the bonfire should be made of nine types of wood. They must be collected by nine teams of married men (or first born men). They must not carry any metal with them. The fire has to be lit by rubbing oak sticks together or a wooden awl twisted in a wooden log.

Participants, have to run sunwise around the fire. Oatcakes are distributed, with one being marked with a black spot. The one who collects it has to jump through the fire three times. Bonfires would have been, by choice on the top of hills. But then they were also held in the streets in London.

May celebrations have a similarity to Halloween. This was also a fire festival and both are uncanny times when sprites and spirits abound. Hawthorn was a favoured wood not only because of its beautiful may flower. It was also said to be the wood the crown of thorns was made from. Hawthorn had the power of resisting supernatural forces. Therefore, it was used to protect doors, cribs, cow sheds and other places from witches. Witches, it was said, got their power to fly from potions made from chopped up infants. The best protection was Christening. The custom was that christening took place as early as possible and normally three days after birth. Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564, so we celebrate his birthday on 23rd April. See my post for more on this subject.

Special May Babies

Cribs would be bedecked with Hawthorn and protection might be augmented by a bible, rowan, and garlic. Babies born between May 1 and 8 were thought to be special. They were destined to have power over man and beast. Weddings were frowned upon in Lent and in May, so April became a popular choice for marriage.

May Dew

After celebrations on May Eve (April 30th), women would go out in the woods to collect May, other flowering plants. They would wash their faces in May Dew preferable from the leaves of Hawthorn. If not from beneath an oak tree, or from a new-made grave. The dew was said to improve their complexion. It was also used for medical conditions such as gout and weak eyes. Thinking of one’s lover on May Day might bring marriage within the year.

May morning would commence with dancing around the Maypole, followed by feasting, and summer games. for more about Maypoles and May Day see my post may-2nd-this-stinking-idol-the-end-of-may-day/

Belenus is a Celtic God of whom very little is clear and unambiguous. He was linked in Gaul with Apollo. The name, some people think, comes from ‘Shining’ but others disagree and think it means ‘Master of Power.’ His association with Irish mythology and the festival of Beltane suggests he was a powerful god in Celtic Europe. Geoffrey of Monmouth has a King called Belinus, and spins a yarn about Belinus and Billingsgate. Linguists prefer the idea that Billingsgate is named after some unknown Saxon called Billings. This may be a little more likely but far less interesting.

See my post on Midsummer for more on Celtic Festivals.

On This Day

1707 The Union of Scotland and England Proclaimed

1945 German Fascist Goebbels kills himself and his entire family

Revised May 1st 2024 and 2025

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Leap Day & and the Roman Calendar February 29th

Druids at All Hallows, by the Tower
Druids at All Hallows, by the Tower

I have just come back from my very first Leap Year Walk, which I gave tonight for London Walks. It was one of a series of my walks, which are about the year through London’s History. So far, I have done, a New Year Walk, an Imbolc Walk (1 February, St Brigid’s Day), a Spring Equinox Walk, a May Day Walk, a Summer Solstice Walk, an Autumn Equinox Walk, a Halloween Walk, and a Winter Solstice Walk. All, at their core, have the subject of the year, how it is arranged, and celebrated in different cultures and different times in London.

I hoped to get this post done, today, but on arrival at home my burglar alarm was ringing, so had to get an emergency electrician out to pacify my neighbours, and tracking down the fault meant turning my house upside down. I rushed it out, with many bad proof reading errors and ommissions, And have now, on the dawn of a new month, and a new Season, updated it. Probably, knowing me, it still has a far few errors! Now, I am rushing to look after my Grandson!

So, the reason there is a leap year, is that the Sun and the Moon have different cycles, which cannot be easily aligned. And secondly, the solar year is not a fixed number, it is not 365 days, but 365 days and a bit.

Originally though, probably, most cultures lived their lives with time keeping controlled by time markers from their everyday environment, days and nights, the waning and waxing of the moon, the seasons, and the changes in the rising and setting of the Sun. Budding nature would have provided other markers as to when to sow, to harvest, to prune, to slaughter, to worship and marry.

The months were given by the cycle of the Moon, which also gave us tides and menstrual cycles. The months were given names, which were often associated with the weather. The trouble was that the Solar year did not align with the Moon, soon the months would get out of kilter with the seasons. So over time, the society would find it was winter in June, or summer in December. (which is OK if you live in Australia).

Society dealt with this in a number of ways. It could be ignored, why shouldn’t it be cold in June, why should June always be in Summer? Another way was to add in extra days, or months, every so often to make sure June remained in the Summer. This is what Egypt, the early Romans and the Celts did. They kept their months aligned to the actual movements of the Moon, and aligned their Solar Year with it by the addition of extra days or a month or two. or a combination of both.

I reported on this in my post on the Terminalia for February 23rd. As I wrote:

Terminus was an old ancient God who was the God of the boundary, the border, the edge, the liminal God. February was the last month of the original Roman year, but the rulers of Rome added an intercalary month every so often, called Mercedonius in an attempt to keep the Solar year in tune with the seasons. And when the intercalary month was added, the last five days of February were given to Mercedonius and the resulting leap year was either 377 or 378 days long.. So, in those years, the 23rd of February was the Terminus of the year. (For more on Terminalia look at my post for February 23rd on Terminalia-god-of-the-boundary)

Now, as the Roman Republic became more sophisticated, the intercalary months were added at the direction of the Pontiffs, supposedly every two and sometimes every three years. But the Pontiffs were often swayed by political advantage, and by the time of Julius Caesar the seasons had got wildly out of sync with the calendar year. The Dictator, therefore, instituted ‘the Year of Confusion’ which was over 400 days long and brought in the Julian Calendar which realigned the calendar back in line with the seasons.

Caesar spent time with Egyptian Astronomers, trying to understand their solution to the problem. They identified that the year was not 365 days long but 356.25 days, so JC ‘fixed’the issue with a leap day every four years. Based on the almost correct calculation of a solar year being 365.25 days. The new calendar was inaugurated on the Kalends of Januarius 709 AUC, or as we would call it I January 45 BC. It became, in time, something the Romans were very proud of – rationalising, measuring, time itself. Romans counted their dates from the time their City was founded by Romulus in what we call 753 BC or 753 BCE. So, 45 BCE in our reckoning is 709 ab urbe condita (AUC ‘from the founding of the City) as the Romans saw it.

I prefer not to use BCE because it seems ‘dishonest’ to me. The idea of AD BC was made up based on a guess as to when Jesus was born. Changing BC to BCE may rid the date of an explicit Christian identification but masks the fact that there is no such thing as the ‘Common Era. What the Common Era is, is the idea made up in the Late Roman period guessing when Jesus was born/ So I think call a spade a spade, even if it’s a broken meaningless spade that is not fit for purpose, either replace it with something rational, or real or call it what it is.

The interesting thing is that Caesar put the leap year in on the 24th February. Why? Because February, being the month of death, was the end of the year. March 25th was originally the beginning of the Roman year (Caesar moved it to January 1st). Why March 25th? Because it was the Spring Equinox. If you look at my post for March 25th you will find out it is the date of the creation of Humanity, the Birthday of Adam, the conception of Jesus, and until 1752, the day the year number changed in Britain.

The other strange thing about the new leap day was that it was not called February 25th. It was not given a number. Rather, February 24th was two days long. This continued in Britain until the date February 29th started appearing in calendars in the 15th Century, although the legendary Lawyer, Edward Coke (1552 – 1634), refers to the two days of February 24th, but the two day 24th was completely replaced by February 29th in the 16th Century.

One slight complication to the story of February 29th was that February 29th did exist before the Julian reforms. When February was not interrupted by the intercalary month, as described above, it was 29 days long. Julius Caesar made the months alternate 30 and 31 except for February which was 29 days long. When the Senate gave Julius the honour of having the 7th Month named after him, things were OK, but then Augustus wanted the same thing. The Senate duly gave him the next month, which became known as August, but it only had 30 days. This could not be allowed! So they made it up to 31 and stole the 29th from February and made February only 28 days long. This change also meant that there were now three 31 days months in a row, so they reduced September from 31 to 30, boosted October to 31, reduced November to 30 and boosted December to 31,

Hence, we can no longer remember Caesar rational allotment of days in the month, and we need to hum to ourselves:

Thirty days have September
April, June, and November
February has twenty-eight alone.
All the rest have thirty-one.
Excepting leap year – that’s the time
When February’s days are twenty-nine.

But Caesar had not solved the problem of the shifting year, he had just minimised it. By the Council of Nicea in the early 4th Century (and not yet called AD!) the small error had changed the date of the Spring Equinox, from March 25th to March 21st. So, when Constantine convened the Council to bang the heads together of the Church leaders to unify their religion, particularly in regard to the date of Easter, and whether Jesus was equal to God. They fudged the complex issue of the date of Christ’s death, and used March 21st as the foundation of their calculation on the moon-based festival of Easter (more of which at Easter!)

It wasn’t until the 16th Century that Pope Gregory, solved the problem of the inaccuracy of Caesar’s solution, by introducting the Gregorian Calendar, for which see my post here.

See the following posts for the Roman Year:

Romulus’s 10 month year here

Spring & the Month of New Life March 1st

Roman Months here and more on the Ides of March here