Page:Shepheards Calendar-Crane 1898.djvu/26

 the count of the year was not perfected, as afterward it was by Julius Csar, they began, to tell the monethes from March’s beginning, and according to the same, God (as is said in Scripture) commanded the people of the Jews, to count the moneth Abib, that which we call March, for the first moneth, in remembrance that in that moneth he brought them out of the land of Egypt: yet, according to tradition of latter times it hath been otherwise observed, both in government of the Church and rule of mightiest realms. For from Julius Csar who first observed the leap year, which he called Bissextilem Annum, and brought into a more certain course the odd wand’ring days which of the Greeks were called Hyperbainontes, of the Romans Intercalares, (for in such matter of learning I am forced to use the terms of the learned,) the monethes have been numbered twelve, which in the first ordinance of Romulus were but ten, counting but 304 days in every year, and beginning with March. But Numa Pompilius, who was the father of all the Roman ceremonies and religion, seeing that reckoning to agree neither with the course of the sun nor the moon, thereunto added two monethes, Januarie and Februarie; wherein it seemeth, that wise king minded upon good reason to begin the year at Januarie, of him therefore so called tanquam janua anni, the gate and entrance of