Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/738

666 to the first of the following month, made 19 days of. In, therefore, the 14th day of the month was called the nineteenth before the of  (counting inclusively), the 15th was the 18th before the , and so on to the 30th, which was called the third before the  (tertio Calendas), the last being the second of the , or the day before the  (pridie Calendas).

.—The is either or civil. The   is the period of  in which the  performs a  in its  about the, or passes from any point of the  to the same point again; and consists of 365days 5hours 48. and 46. of. The civil is that which is employed in, and varies among different , both in respect of the  at which it commences and of its subdivisions. When regard is had to the 's motion alone, the regulation of the, and the distribution of the days into months, may be effected without much trouble; but the difficulty is greatly increased when it is sought to reconcile solar and lunar periods, or to make the subdivisions of the depend on the , and at the same time to preserve the correspondence between the whole  and the s.

Of the .—In the arrangement of the civil, two objects are sought to be accomplished,—first, the equable distribution of the days among twelve months; and secondly, the preservation of the beginning of the at the same distance from the s or es. Now, as the consists of 365 days and a fraction, and 365 is a number not  by 12, it is impossible that the months can all be of the same length, and at the same time include all the days of the. By reason also of the fractional excess of the length of the above 365 days, it likewise happens that the s cannot all contain the same number of days if the epoch of their commencement remains fixed; for the day and the civil  must necessarily be considered as beginning at the same instant; and therefore the extra hours cannot be included in the  till they have accumulated to a whole day. As soon as this has taken place, an additional day must be given to the.

The civil calendar of all has been borrowed from that of the. is said to have divided the into ten months only, including in all 304 days, and it is not very well known how the remaining days were disposed of. The ancient  commenced with, as is indicated by the names, , , , which the last four months still retain. and, likewise, were anciently denominated and , their present appellations having been bestowed in compliment to  and. In the reign of two months were added to the,  at the beginning, and  at the end; and this arrangement continued till the  , when the  changed the order of the months, and placed  after. The months now consisted of twenty-nine and thirty days alternately, to correspond with the synodic revolution of the, so that the contained 354 days; but a day was added to make the number odd, which was considered more fortunate, and the  therefore consisted of 355 days. This differed from the  by ten whole days and a fraction; but, to restore the coincidence,  ordered an additional or  month to be inserted every second  between the 23rd and 24th of, consisting of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately, so that four s contained 1465 days, and the mean length of the  was consequently 366$1⁄4$ days. The additional month was called Mercedinus, or Mercedonius, from, s, probably because the s of and  were usually paid at this  of the. According to the above arrangement, the was too long by one day, which rendered another correction necessary. As the error amounted to twenty-four days in as many s, it was ordered that every third period of eight s, instead of containing four months, amounting in all to ninety days, should contain only three of those months, consisting of twenty-two days each. The mean length of the was thus reduced to 365$1⁄4$ days; but it is not certain at what time the  periods, borrowed from the, were introduced into the  calendar, or whether they were at any  strictly followed. It does not even appear that the length of the month was regulated by any certain principle, for a discretionary power was left with the s, to whom the care of the calendar was committed, to  more or fewer days according as the  was found to differ more or less from the. This power was quickly abused to serve objects, and the calendar consequently thrown into confusion. By giving a greater or less number of days to the month, the s were enabled to prolong the term of a, or hasten the  s; and so little care had been taken to regulate the , that, at the time of , the civil  differed from the  by three months, so that the  months were carried back into , and the al into. In order to put an end to the disorders arising from the negligence or ignorance of the s, abolished the use of the lunary year and the month, and regulated the civil  entirely by the. With the advice and assistance of, he fixed the mean length of the at 365$1⁄4$ days, and decreed that every fourth  should have 366 days, the other s having each 365. In order to restore the to the 25th of, the place it occupied in the time of , he ordered two extraordinary months to be inserted between  and  in the current , the first to consist of thirty-three, and the second of thirty-four days. The month of twenty-three days fell into the  of course, so that the ancient  of 355 days received an augmentation of ninety days; and the  on that occasion contained in all 445 days. This was called the last of confusion. The first Julian commenced with the 1st of  of the  before the, and the 708th from the. In the distribution of the days through the several months, adopted a simpler and more commodious arrangement than that which has since prevailed. He had ordered that the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh months, that is,, , , , and , should have each thirty-one days, and the other months thirty, excepting , which in common s should have only twenty-nine, but every fourth thirty days. This order was interrupted to gratify the vanity of, by giving the month bearing his name as many days as , which was named after the first. A day was accordingly taken from and given to ; and in order that three months of thirty-one days might not come together,  and  were reduced to thirty days, and thirty-one given to  and. For so frivolous a reason was the regulation of abandoned, and a capricious arrangement introduced, which it requires some attention to remember. The additional day which occurred every fourth was given to, as being the shortest month, and