Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/239

Rh and six of 29 days and an intercalary month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354+384+354+383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four years, each containing four months—the first, third, fifth, and eighth—of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28 days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary month of 27 days inserted every second year (365+383+355+382 = 1475 days). In like manner this calendar deviated from the original distribution of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7, sometimes of 8 days; instead of this it permanently fixed the first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day; so that the second and fourth weeks in the month consisted of 8 days, the third ordinarily of 9 (only in the case of the February of 28 days it consisted of 8, and in the intercalary month of 27 days, of 7), the first of 6 where the month consisted of 31, and in other cases of 4 days. As the course of the three last weeks of the month was thus essentially similar, it was henceforth necessary only to proclaim the length of the first week in each month. Thence the first day of the first week received the name of "proclamation-day" (kalendæ). The first days of the second and fourth weeks, which were uniformly of 8 days, were (in conformity with the Roman custom of reckoning, inclusively of the extremes) designated as "nine-days" (nonæ, noundinæ), while the first of the third week retained the old name of idus (perhaps "dividing-day"). The chief motive lying at the bottom of this strange re-modelling of the calendar seems to have been a belief in the salutary virtue of odd numbers; and while in general it is based on the oldest form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a mystic view of numbers. But the consequence was that this Roman calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should Errata: