Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1910 — ORIGIN OF MODERN CALENDAR. [ARTICLE]

ORIGIN OF MODERN CALENDAR.

Old Computations of Kami Pompll* Ins Reformed by Julias Caesar, i A curious point in* our modern calendar is the irregularity in the number of the dttyß ih the different months. We could hardly remember the right lengths if it were not for the familiar rhyme, “Thirty days hath September.” In the oldest Roman calendars the months were of thirty and twenty-nine days each. But when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar of Numa Pompilius he gave them alternating thirty-one and thirty, beginning with January. February was an exception, and was given twenty-nine in ordinary and thirty in leap fears. After Caesar’s death, the month Quintilis was renamed Julius in his honor. Some time later Augustus chose the following month. Sextills, as his own, and called it Augustus. But it had only thirty* days, and it was not to be ensured that Augustus should be inferior to Julius. So the emperor took one day from February, leaving it but twenty-eight, and gave it to Augustus. This disturbed Caesar’s prderly arrangements, and three months of thirty-one days, viz., July, August and September, came together. The extra day of the latter was, therefore, given to Qetober, and a day taken from November was given to December. The calendar, Uke so many other of our institutions, has been a thing of slow growth, and herein, perhaps, lies the secret of its stability.. This is illustrated by the fate of the brand-new calendar df the French republic. At the time of the revolution an attempt was made to get rid of the Roman names of the months, and other associations. A new calendar was arranged by a committee, of which the moving spirit seems to have been Philippe Fabre d’Eglantine, dramatist and revolutionist. The old months were cut up so that from eight to eleven days of one were united with froni twenty-two to niiwteen qf the following, to make twese months of thirty*’ days each. - '