from the technical chronologers, Scaliger, Spanheim, Beverege, and Jackson, by those who are curious in such matters, I shall close this article with the successive improvements of our calendar year, from its rude original state, among the ancient Latins or Albans, to its present state of perfection.

THE LATIN YEAR.

It has been generally supposed that the primitive Latin, as well as the Roman year, consisted only of ten months, because there are only ten named in the calendars of both. But this is a mistake: both had two anonymous intercalary months to make up the primitive number of 360 days; and these were the same months to which Numa afterwards gave the names of Januarius and Februarius*, as in the annexed Table.

* Sciendum decem tantum menses fuisse apud majores-duo vero propter rationem signorum anni intercalabantur; qui postea a Jano et a Februo nominati sunt. Servius in Virgil. Georg. i. 43.

The irregular division of the ancient Latin months was owing to the unequal divisions of the zodiac, supposed to be occupied by the twelve constellations. Thus, according to Servius, Cancer had scarcely 17 degrees allotted to him; Gemini had about 20; Leo about 39; Virgo about 46; and Chela, the claws of Scorpio, anciently occupied the room of Libra. Reckoning, therefore, that the sun moved through a degree in the ecliptic each day, and 360 degrees, or the whole, in the year, and allotting as many days to each month as there were degrees in the sign belonging to it, the civil months became necessarily unequal. Servius on Virgil, Georg. i. 24. This is a curious fact, and shows how early the civil months were changed from lunar to solar.

YEAR OF ROMULUS.

Romulus made an important reform in the Latin months, by bringing them nearer to the true standard, and rendering them more equable. He transposed Martius from the third to the first, in honour of Mars, the god of war, as he was himself of a warlike disposition.

YEAR OF NUMA.

By more accurate observations, Numa found that the annual period of the moon, or twelve lunations, amounted to 354 days, and of the sun to 365 days. Instead of the old year, he substituted the lunar, which fell short of the solar by eleven days. Therefore, doubling this deficiency, he intercalated a month of 22 days, at the end of every second year, after the 23d day of the second anonymous month, which he called February, from Februo," to purge or purify," from the purifications then usually made by the people, and sacrifices to the manes, or infernal deities; and which, therefore, he did not presume to remove, while he transferred the first anonymous month to the head of the calendar, and called it Januarius, in honour of Janus, the god of time *, descended from, Jah, the God of the Hebrews. This emendation of the year of Romulus marks uncommon

* At Numa nec Janum nec avitas præterit Umbras,
Mensibus antiquis addidit ille duos.—

Primus enim Jani mensis, quia janua prima est;
Qui sacer est imis Manibus, imus erat.

Ovid. Fasti. lib. 1.

skill and sagacity in Numa, especially at so early an age, and in a country so remote from Chaldea and Egypt, those ancient seats of science. His construction of the lunar year, and adjustment to the solar of 365 days, was by far more simple, ingenious, and scientific, than any of the boasted cycles of Greece or Egypt, even at a later period.

Still, however, Numa injured his calendar by a superstitious veneration for odd numbers, as if they were more lucky than even *. This led him to deduct a day from all the even months of Romulus. February, as being in itself an unlucky month, he left an even number of 28 days, (including the five supernumerary days.) And though January ought to have had but 28 days, being the complement of the rest to 354 days, he added a superfluous day thereto, and made it an odd number 29; and so his lunar year 355 days, or a day too much, and thereby occasioned an excess of two days in his Dieteris, or biennial cycle.

To rectify this redundancy, of which Numa could not be ignorant, we learn from a very obscure passage of Livy, in the history of his reign, that "he so managed his intercalations as to make his year fully correspond with the solar, in the course of a period of 24 years t." Now this could only be effected by omitting the 24 redundant days in 24 years, or subtracting a month of 24 days from every 24th year. Jackson, Vol. ii. p. 62. Spanheim, Chron. Sacr. Part 1, p. 10.

YEAR OF THE DECEMVIRS.

The Decemvirs, who, according to Livy and Dion. Halicarn., were created B.C. 452; Ovid says, was the general belief, made a slight alteration in the order of Numa's months, by mak

* Numero Deus impare gaudet.-Virgil.

+ Ad cursum lunæ, in duodecim mensibus describit annum; quem, (quia tricenos dies singulis mensibus luna non explet, desuntque dies solido anno qui solstitiali circumagitur orbe) intercalaribus mensibus interponendis ita dispensavit ut quarto et vigesimo anno ad metam eandem solis unde orsi essent, plenis annorum omnium spatiis dies congruerent. Livy, i. 19. N. B. Macrobius has miserably perplexed and perverted the meaning of this passage, by supposing that Numa knew the correcter year of 365 days, and meant to adjust his cycle of 24 years to the Greek Octaeteris. Saturnal. lib. i. 13; and Scaliger blames Numa.

Postmodo creduntur spatio distantia longo

Tempora bis quini continuasse viri.—OVID.

ing February the second month instead of the last, and thereby restoring March to its former station, according to Romulus, as the first month of spring; and this order continued until the time of Julius Cæsar, and ever since.

But the Roman calendar having been entrusted to the care of the Pontifices, they, through neglect or design, did not make the proper intercalations and corrections *. Sometimes they inserted more, sometimes fewer days than they ought, in order to lengthen or shorten the year, thereby to serve their friends, or injure their enemies, who held public offices. This partiality or corruption, introduced such confusion into the calendar, that the civil months no longer corresponded to the proper seasons of the year, but had shifted their places, and fallen backwards considerably. Thus Cicero, four years before Caesar's third consulate, dated the vernal equinox on the ides of May, which then in reality fell on the 23d of March. May therefore had fallen backwards into the place of March.

To reform this abuse, Julius Cæsar, who was himself a good mathematician, and published a tract on the subject, which is since lost, assisted by Sosigenes, an eminent Alexandrian astronomer, and others, undertook the arduous but important task of correcting the calendar, and also of reforming the old Roman year, which was lunar in its months, and introducing solar in their stead.

For this purpose, he formed a preparatory year of 15 months, or 445 days, thence called the year of confusion. This year began the thirteenth of October, according to the calendar, U.C. 708, or B.C. 46, the day on which he entered upon his third consulate. This day he called the first of January, and first intercalated one month of 23 days after the end of February, making a broken quarter of 80 days, in order to bring the first of March, according to the old system, to its true place of the first of January in the new. After which, he intercalated two months more after the old November, to make up 12 months; assigning to them 34 and 33 days, or 67 in both, which was the complement of the old 10 months to 365 days, as in the following Table, in which the old and intercalated months are reduced to their true places in the Julian year :

* Diligenter habenda ratio intercalandi est; quod institutum perite a Numa, posteriorum pontificum negligentiâ dissolutum est. Cicero de Legib. lib. ii.