Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Jessie Churchill, San Francisco, USA Septemeber is the ninth month for us, but the Romans had only ten months in their calendar, so the number-names worked out right for them.
This nudged the later months along by two and so September became the ninth instead of the seventh month etc. It was only later when July and August Julius and Augustus Caesar were added that they became out of sequence.
Keith Mason, London, UK The answer is obvious - the year used to start in March close to the vernal equinox rather than January approximately the winter solstice. In most of Europe confusion over this extended for quite some time, leading to the appearance in historical texts of "old style" dates year starts March 25 and "new style" year starts January 1. Susan Cartwright, Sheffield The Roman calendar had March as the first month of the year, so the count is correct: September is the seventh month.
What seems somewhat odd is the fact that only the later months, and not all of them, are "counted". Any explication for this? Wittig, Freiberg, Germany Further to my first answer and later contributions, it's true that there were originally only 10 lunar months, with a roughly 64 day 'non month' winter period.
However the two extra months, Jan and Feb, were added at the end of the year, giving a year of about days, with a short 'non month' at the end, before the time of Julius Caesar. He reformed the calendar, lengthened the months so they filled up the whole day period, and later the 5th and 6th months Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed after him and his successor Augustus.
The 'non month' survives in vestigial form as the leap day, February The Romans simply didn't bother to mark or measure the days in what we call now January and February because little to no agriculture happened in those months, and calendars at that time were developed primarily for farmers. Related: Why did Rome fall? But the Romans were a notoriously organized bunch, so why would they introduce two new months and then simply ignore the fact that many of their other named months no longer made sense?
Well, the answer could be that naming conventions were a bit of a political quagmire back then — lots of people in power were jostling to rename months to aggrandize their origins.
Emperor Caligula, for example, tried to have September changed to "Germanicus" in honor of his father, Sparavigna said. Emperor Domitian also had a go and tried to turn October into Domitianus. But none of this went down terribly well with the Roman public, who as it turned out, were fairly conservative and didn't take well to change for change's sake. This aversion to change makes sense — after all, many of us today still resist changes to the way we measure things; the metric system is far from universal — and could partly explain why the authorities didn't alter the naming system when they introduced January and February.
The month theory was actually first put about by late-Roman thinkers, who were contemplating their own nonsensical ordering of the months. But others are more skeptical because it all sounds a bit bizarre," Heslin said. The Roman calendar originally began in March, and the months of January and February were added later, after a calendar reform. Copper-alloy figure of Mars, the Roman god of war.
Wearing the armour of a general, he would originally have held a spear in his right hand, now missing, and possibly a shield in his left also missing. The Romans called the month Aprilis. Antoine Jules Pelletier fl. Watercolour, strengthened with gum, c. May is named after the Greek goddess Maia. This print is an allegorical representation of the month of May. The artist has included the twins Castor and Pollux because the zodiac sign of Gemini starts in May.
Christian Bernhard Rode — , Allegorical representation of the month of May. The twins Castor resting on a cloud and Pollux with a spear and shield are watching a shepherdess. Etching, June is named after the Roman goddess Juno — the god of marriage and childbirth, and the wife of Jupiter, king of the gods. Here she is seated in a chariot. Engraving, — July and August were named after two major figures of the ancient Roman world — the statesman Julius Caesar on the left above, slightly damaged!
Left: Marble head from a statue, probably of Julius Caesar.
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