Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1881-12-28

lengthen 1t as the course of time mlgh
require. This discretion, as might have
been expected, the pontiffs did not fail tt
abuse. They were very high anC
mighty personages, and they were no.
to be tied down to few days more OF
less, sun, moon and stars to the con.
trary notwithstanding. They did not
hesitate to lengthen or abridge the add.
tional month, in order to prolong the
term of magistracy or hasten the an
nual elections; or, in other words, to
serve their own personal and political
ends. In the course of time they got the
year in great pickle.
The first of January became very
movable day. 1t ought to have fallen
about the winter solstice. 1t fell, in
fact, at all sorts of times. When Julius
Caesar reached manhood things had got
so mixed that the first of January fell
about the day that we now call the Goth
of October.
Everyone knows when Caesar had be-
come master of the Roman empire, he
being moreover Pontifex Maximus, and
therefore authorized by virtue of his
office to regulate the year, he determined
to set it right once for ALL Most school
|
| Sosigenes, an eminent astronomer of
Alexandria. to compute the exact time
| from one winter solstice to another; how
he computed at 365 days and 6 hours;
how nearly right that computation was,
and how Caesar thereupon altered the
length of the months, and decreed that
while each year should have but twelve
months, every fourth year should have
an additional day, thus making it 366
days long. In order to start right the
year thus reformed, it was, of course,
necessary to decree that a certain day be
called the first of January. But why
Caesar selected the day he did to be
called the first day of January and the
first day of his reformed year, is some
thing with which schoolboys are not SO
familiar, and which some grown persons
may like to have explained.
The year i'll which it was most conven-
lent for Caesar to begin his reformation
of the calendar was the year known in
our chronology as 45 B. G.. To begin
that year about the time of the winter
solstlce of what we now call 46 b. c.,
suited old Roman notions very we'll, for
the ancient Roman year always began on
the first new moon after the winter sol
stice, and the confusion which had
brought the beginning of the year into
October was everywhere regarded as al
together improper. Caesar would have
liked to have begun his reformed year on
the day of the winter solstice, which
would have been logical and natural.
But for ages it had been fixed notion
with nearly all the people, Italians as
well as others, subject to the Romans,
that the first day OF the year should be
the day of a new moon. And it happen
ed that in the year when Caesars re-
formed calendar was to begin the new
moon would notappear until the eleventh
day after the winter soIstice. If his re-
formed year began before the day of the
new moon he would shock religious
preiudices, and the discomfort would be
the greater because he was obliged to
make the year-often called the year of
confusion-before his reformed year, fif-
teen months long.
If Caesar had been reformer after the
pattern of the anti-slavery people of
thirty years ago, or of the teetotal and
woman's rights reformers of our day, he
would have paid no attention to these
ridiculous prejudices of those of whom
he was the master. He would have been
logical at all hazards. But if he is called
"the greatest man of all antiquity" it
is because he abounded in common
sense. The main thing is to get the
year the right length and keep it so.
His luminous intellect saw that his only
hope of securing the latter object was by
shocking as few popular preiudices as
possible. He knew that the exact . day
of the winter solstice could not be
known by popular observation and only
by the more exact observation of scien-
tiic men. He argued that if he could
once get the year started right on the
day Of the new moon, the following first
of January would be accepted as New
Year Day, without opposition, although
it would not be the day of new moon.
He sacrificed the logic. He ordered that
the "year Of confusion should have
455 days and that the first of January Of
what we now call IS B. G. should be the
eleventh day after the winter solstice.
The wisdom of his course has been
proved by its results. For more than
eighteen centuries, the year, with the
slight alterations made by Pope Gregory,
has remained as Julius Caesar regulated
it. And it is perhaps not too much to
say that this reformed calendar owes it's
permanence to the fact of the year be-
ginning at what at first blush appears to
be the absurd, unmeaning and illogical
time of the eleventh day after the winter
solstice. That Caesar could have started
his reformed calendar with any hope of
success, without yielding, as he did, to
popular prejudices. is altogether i'm
probable And of his wisdom in that
respect every New Year day will be a
reminder, until the heavens and the
earth shall be no more.
Too Fond of Dogs.