WHEN DAYS WERE SOLD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22355, 19 March 1938, Page 21

WHEN DAYS WERE SOLD

(SP£CIAI*I«7 waiTTEV 70S TH» 78535.)

BY JEAN STEVENSON.

muddle had become serious, and Julius Caesar set his Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes to work to find a good system, Man’s earliest standard of time was the day, marked out by the alternation of light and darkness and determined by the rotation of the earth on its axis. Then the approximate 29£ days’ period between new moon and new moon was fixed on as’ a standard interval; and at last the recurrence of the seasons suggested that a period containing one of each season should be used as a third standard.. Not all nations of antiquity adopted a 12-month year, but they used some system which made the year contain the four seasons and have 354 days. The Roman year had at first only 10 months, beginning with March; but quite early a belief in the luck of odd numbers grew up, and the days were increased to 355 in the year, to be shared out to 12 months, including two new ones, January and February. It was found, however, by Romans. Jews.' and Greeks, that as time went on the lunar year would get out of time with thq solar year, and adjustments and intercalations had to be made—the intercalations which were of such value to the unscrupulous pontiffs. The people in general in these ancient times had no way of telling the time of year accurately; but it was the custom to proclaim the first day of each month in the public places so that the people might know what religious festivals were near. This first day, which was always proclaimed, was known as the Kalendae or Kalends, from the Greek verb I call, and gave its name to the calendar which is defined as “the mode of adjusting the natural divisions of time with respect to each other for the purposes of civil life.” The Roman month was divided into three periods, the days before the Nones, which fell in most months on the ninth day, the days before the Ides, which fell in most months on the fifteenth day, and the days before the ’Calends. This very complicated way of arranging an almanac looks almost simple when it is compared with the Anglo-Saxon method of the Clog Almanac referred to by the lexicographer Verstegari in his quaint and ingenious attempt to derive the peculiar word. “The ancient Saxons,” he says.

THERE were some strange things used as selling commodities in olden times, and among the strangest were days. It was in " the times of Rome’s greatness, and before Julius Caesar had begun his elaborate reforms, that the pontiffs who had sole charge of the calendar made it their habit to sell days to the highest bidder. Certainly there were-few buyers; a Magistrate or a tax farmer might find it worth his bribe to have his just period of office lengthened by a number of days; or a powerful friend of a high priest might find it very convenient, if his pressing debts were too soon falling due, to have the year suddenly curtailed so that his obligations fell steeply into oblivion with the days. It is not surprising, when such things went on, that the years got out of time with the sun, that spring festivals were held in the summer, and that Julius Caesar found himself “going into winter quarters in the spring.” By that time the

A Muddled Calendar: Julius Caesar’s Predicament

“used to engrave upon certaine squarred sticks, about a foot in length, or shorter or longer, as they pleased, the courses of the moones of the whole yere, whereby they could alwaies certainely tell when the new moones, full moones, and changes shbuld happen, as also their festival daies; and such a carved stick they called an ai-mon-aghl; that is to say, al-mon-heed, to wit, the regard or observation of all* the moones; and hence is derived the name almanac.” (But don’t believe him.) This strange-looking almanac was a permanent one; anyone who felt energetic enough, knowing the day on which any particular year began, could work out from the notches on the sticks the day of any date in the calendar. Yet the days and the months were not numbered, they were decorated with symbols peculiar to them. So St. Valentine’s Day, February 14, had a true lover’s knot; St. David’s Day, March 1 a harp; May 1, a branch to indicate the fete of the bringing in of the May boughs; and St. Barnaby’s Day, June. 11, a rake for the hay harvest. With this almanac our ancestors made do for very many years.

(To be continued.)