It's Stabby Time!
Caesar (to the Soothsayer): The Ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar, but not gone.
-- Julius Caesar Act III, some bloke goes by Willie Shakespeare
So what exactly IS an "Ides" on the calendar, anyway?
Well, back in the ancient days while the Romans worked on getting us the roads, aqueducts, wine, maritime laws, and vomitoriums (it's NOT a place to upchuck, but their word describing the exit ramps from their sports stadiums), they did it all working with a calendar that followed the lunar cycle. That is, the fullness of the moon in a 28-day cycle of a dark face, a half-full, full, and waning to dark again.
The new moon (or dark) signaled the Calends (or Kalends) of the month (hence the name calendar for our monthly schedules). The Calends were when people paid off their debts, similar to today when people pay off mortgages, utilities, cable, that blackmailer who's got all the juicy video on you, etc. The Nones were at the seventh day where the moon would be half-full, and then the Ides were the full moon (total brightness) which would be on the 15th day, before everything waning back down to the next Calends.
Knowing these days helped the Romans keep up with their religious holidays, on which days to appease certain gods/goddesses, and keep track of their agrarian schedules (farming back then meant food and prosperity).
There was, however, a slight problem.
While the moon is an easy method of keeping to a strict schedule - where the lunar cycle is roughly 29 days, to where a flexible 28 days with an occasional leap day added could work - it didn't reflect the seasonal patterns of where the Earth is cycling around the Sun. Working on a farm requires knowing the best times to plant your seeds, fertilize the ground, grow the things that grow best in cold climes and then grow things best in warmer climes. Because the cold months and warm months depended more on where the Earth was in relation to the Sun, the Romans quickly kept losing track of when the winter months were and when to start growing things in springtime.
Various attempts at reforms took place during the days of the Roman Republic, but it wasn't until Julius Caesar showed up, becoming the High Priest of Rome (the Pontifex Maximus) as well as military dictator winning the civil wars against Pompey and other Senate rivals. He had the astrologers and scientists map out an unbalanced but longer calendar year more aligned to the solar (or tropical) patterns, and added three emergency months in 46 BCE to get things aligned in time for 45 BCE.
And what was the thanks he got?!?!
2 comments:
I lucked out and got one of those life-changing teachers in High School. His name was Mr. Miller, and I had him for Fantasy/Satire, where he taught the Tolkien trilogy as college level literature, science fiction, where he taught Dune and Childhood's End among other greats, and Shakespeare, where he did as much as any other human toward teaching me how to think.
He did not, however, teach Julius Caeser in that class.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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