Talk:Julian calendar/Archive 1

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—Yamara ✉ 18:20, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Time/Assessment|WikiProject Time assessment rating]] comment 

message: REGARDING the issue of leap day error every 3 years and debating who has the right sequence i would like to see this 1999 publication. 
:The papyrus is pOxy LXI 4175, announced in A R Jones, ZPE 119 (1997) 157, formally published in A R Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 4133-4300a) (Phildelphia, 1999), and analysed calendrically in C J Bennett, ZPE 142 (2003) 221 and ZPE 147 (2004) 165. --Chris Bennett 20:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You can see an Excel spreadsheet giving Roman/Julian conversions that includes this model for the three year error at http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Egypt/ptolemies/chron/roman/roman_civil.xls
--Chris Bennett 20:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leap day error 

message: I revised the portion of the article dealing with the Orthodox Church's continuing use of the Julian Calendar. First, I wanted to distinguish sharply between the adoption of the New Calendar in Orthodox countries by the civil administrations and its (partial) adoption by some national churches. Accordingly, I put the material on Orthodox usage into a separate paragraph. Second, the article, before I changed it, left the impression that most Orthodox Christians adopted the revised Julian Calendar after 1923. In fact, world-wide, the great majority of Orthodox Christians (> 80%?) use nothing but the Old Calendar. I do not wish to debate which usage is correct (this is not the page for such sterile discussions), but I think it is important to be accurate about the numbers. jloukidelis 2004-10-17
:Your description is confused and I suspect you misunderstand the 1923 proposal (you apparently regard it as virtually identical to the old Julian calendar whereas it is radically different). In your description you state that Easter and Pentecost are calculated using the "revised Julian calendar" but that the Nativity (the fixed date of 25 December) uses the "new calendar". This implies that you regard the revised Julian calendar and the new calendar as two different calendars. If they are different, then what is the "new" calendar? Is it the Gregorian calendar?
:The 1923 proposal had two parts, solar and lunar. The solar part is described in revised Julian calendar. Thirteen days were removed to bring it into agreement with the present Gregorian calendar, but its leap years were different. If the year number is evenly divisible by four it is a leap year, unless it is evenly divisible by 100 then it is not, unless division by 900 leaves a remainder of 200 or 600 then it is a leap year. Because 2000 divided by 900 leaves 200 it is a leap year as it is in the Gregorian calendar. Because 2100 divided by 900 leaves 300 which is neither 200 nor 600 then it is not a leap year in agreement with the Gregorian calendar. Similarly for 2200 and 2300. Because 2400 divided by 900 leaves 600 it is also a leap year just as it is in the Gregorian calendar. But 2800 divided by 900 leaves 100 which is neither 200 nor 600 so it is not a leap year unlike the Gregorian calendar. So the revised Julian calendar will be equal to the Gregorian calendar until 2800 (which is what I said in the description you reverted). Thus for the next few centuries any country or church which adopted the solar part celebrates its fixed dates on the same dates as in the Gregorian calendar, which is what I think you were trying to say. The revised Julian calendar article states that the solar part was adopted by the Greek and Syrian Orthodox Churches (though a few Old Calendar churches in those countries continue to use the Julian calendar), but the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches did not, so they celebrate the Nativity on 25 December (Julian) which is 7 January (Gregorian).
:The lunar part of the 1923 proposal was quite different and  was not adopted by any country or church, so neither Easter nor Pentecost nor any other moveable feast uses the "revised Julian calendar" as you state — all continue to use the old Julian calendar. The lunar portion actually tried to adopt astronomical rules at Jerusalem. It would have made Easter the first Sunday after the full moon that is the first to occur on or after the vernal equinox, where day is midnight-to-midnight at Jerusalem. Here, both full moon and vernal equinox are the astronomical instants. This was so radical that no Orthodox church was willing to accept it, so all continue to celebrate Easter and Pentecost according to the old Julian calendar.
:An Orthodox link is On the question of the "Revised Julian Calendar". — Joe Kress 17:10, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
::Does anyone fancy working on WikiProject Christian liturgical year? Gareth Hughes 11:05, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthodox Use of the Julian Calendar 

message: Since you don't have a talk page of your own I have to reply to you here.
You wrote:
:O what do you know about what you are doing?!
More than you do apparently.
:Did you even look at the date converter link which you "restored" to the Julian calendar article? Your "restoration" was quite out of place.
Did you?  It converts Julian day numbers to Julian dates before 1582 and Gregorian dates thereafter. That's a perfectly reasonable external link for this page.  I have used it alot in my own research on the Julian equivalents to dates in the pre-Julian calendar.
:And as for my statement about days of the week: it is quite useful when you are trying to draw up a Julian calendar for a particular year, so you can line up the days with the right days of the week!!
I agree it's useful.  My initial reaction to this was to leave it alone as a stub for a more comprehensive subsection on the week, since the current article doesn't discuss it, and it reasonably could, although the week isn't just an issue for the Julian calendar.  However, I found that there is a perfectly good article on the history of the week which even mentions the Dominical letter.  This is where your algorithm belongs.  So clearly the right thing to do was to add a link to that article and to remove the stub you had added. 
:I'm going to put back what I wrote.
And I'm going to remove it again.  If you want to add your comment about Thursday to the article on the week, go right ahead.  That's the right place for it.--Chris Bennett 02:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thhe link title is immaterial to the relevance of the link itself -- if you thought it was misleading, you could have just changed it.  As to the relevance of the link, I don't see how the Fourmilab convertor is any more or less relevant to this page.  Why throw out this link but keep the "see also" link to "Julian year (astronomy)"?  However, I haven't bothered to look at the Fourmilab convertor before.  Now that I have, I think it is rather more useful than the USNO link, because it covers additional calendars, while still providing conversions between the Julian Calendar and JDN.  So, while I disagree entirely with your argument, I'm willing to live with your proposal. --Chris Bennett 19:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To the anonymous user who wants to remove the Julian date converter 

message: While Garzo was quite right to remove the Trivia section here, it was still pretty funny.  JHCC  (talk) 17:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia removal by Garzo

message: This article refers to the Gregorian calender, which doesn't have a page.  To create a context for the Julian calender it would be helpful to readers if someone created a page for the Gregorian calender... I may if I have time in the next few weeks.
Nudas veritas 00:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article Gregorian calendar does exist and is linked at its first reference. Just click on the hyperlink to access it. Thanks for the alert — I have created a redirect for your common misspelling. — Joe Kress 06:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  gregorian calender 

message: Found this article quite interesting and most helpful. However, I had trouble understanding the math in one sentence. "This intercalary month was formed by inserting 22 days before the last five days of February, creating a 27-day month."
To me this sounds as if the original February only had 5 days. That can't be correct, so I must misunderstand the sentence and if I do so misunderstand, many others will, as well. Could you clarify? Thanks!  
Sporophyte 03:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The original February had 28 days, and it still has 28 days. But in leap years, February was split into two parts. The first part had 23 or 24 days which was still called February, even though truncated. The last five days of February lost that name and were attached at the end of a new 22-day block of days. The 27-day combination was called Intercalaris (aka Mercedonis). When the truncated February had 24 days, its last day was a duplicate of the first of the last five days of Intercalaris. See the calendar wall painting from Roman Calendar, which displays the ordinary 355-day year of the Roman Republic, including a 28-day February, as well as a 27-day Intercalaris displayed after December which was used during leap years (although inserted between a truncated February and March). — Joe Kress 07:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgive me for disagreeing with everyone else, but I think this is confused. As I understand it (and this is what Agnes Kirsopp Michels has in "Calendar of the Roman Republic" which is pretty much the authoritative work after Mommsen) February was shortened to 23/24 days and Intercalarius followed. Its quite clear that embolistic years had 377/378 days in them. You can't have February and Intercalarius having 28 and 27 days respectively. You have two options (1) Intercalarius was short (22 days) *or* (2) February was shortened. We know, from Fasti such as the one illustrated that Intercalarius was 27 days long. More tellingly there are Fasti with the Regifugium marked as VI ante Kal Mar, but in Intercalarius, which means the Regifugium must have happened in Intercalarius, not possible if Intercalarius was interspersed into Februarius surely. Would anyone object if I amended the article to reflect this. Francis Davey 15:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

text: You are both saying the same thing, and so does the article, perhaps not as clearly as it could.  It's the calendar of the Fasti Antiates that had 28 and 27 days for February and Intercalaris, not the year, for the simple reason that that calendar was painted on a wall and was (presumably) meant to be used for years at a time.  The users of the calendar understood that in intercalary years February had to be truncated as Joe describes, before jumping across to Intercalaris.  Brind'Amour points out that in what he presumes was the original Decemviral calendar, starting in March rather than January, February would be the last month of the year and Intercalaris would follow it immediately in a painted calendar, which would have made the relationship clearer. --Chris Bennett 21:06, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No we aren't. The article talks about "inserting 22 days before the last five days of February" -- the impliaction being that 22 new days were insterted and the days that followed formed a part of the monthy of February. That is an idea I have seen in a number of places on USENET and would imply that (a) intercalarius has only 22/23 days and (b) that the last days of the year (before March) would be part of February -- again contemporary evidence says no. It may be this is not what the article means, but in that case it should say that February was shortened and followed by Interc. of 27 days (is that what you think it says?). There's no discussion of the additional day by the way. Francis Davey 20:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You did not quote the complete sentence. It said "inserting 22 days before the last five days of February, creating a 27 day month." I thought it was obvious that the "27 day month" refered to Intercalaris because 22 + 5 = 27. And the following sentence said that February was truncated to 23 or 24 days, so it obviously lost a few days. Since that did not satisfy you, I have explictly stated that the last five days of February became the last five days of Intercalaris. I also mentioned the duplicate day. Does the new wording satisfy your objections? — Joe Kress 09:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. I was concerned because a confused view does exist, so its important to make it clear. Out of interest, what do you mean by the 24th day of February being a duplicate day? I'm not sure I understand that. Post-Julian reform, the intercalary day was a duplicate (hence bissextile) what in practical terms did the last day of February being a duplicate mean? Francis Davey 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I assumed that, when present, the 24th day of February would keep its characteristic of a dies nefasti, which I also assumed characterized the 23rd day of Intercalaris, Regifugium, hence a duplicate regarding its fasti characteristic. But that may be making too many assumptions, so I'll let Chris state what the archaealogical evidence supports. — Joe Kress 10:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've spun it a little further, but I removed the sentence about the duplicate day, since I don't think its necessary to mention this in order to explain how the month was constructed (especially in an article on the Julian calendar!)  The issue is a very obscure detail about the operation of the Roman festival calendar.  The last day of the 23-day truncated February was the Terminalia, so that the following days, in a March-based year, were considered as being after the end of the year.  However, the following day was the festival of the Regifugium.  In the Fasti Antiates, the Regifugium is marked twice, once in February and once in Intercalaris.  Clearly, in an ordinary year the Regifugium was celebrated on the day after the Terminalia, and in a 377-day year it was celebrated on 23 Intercalaris.  In both cases the date was the same:  ad VI Kal Mart.  What is unclear is when the Regifugium was celebrated in a 378-day year, since both marked days  existed in that year, which is why the day is considered to have been duplicated.  (A related issue is what was the criterion the Romans originally used to decide that the intercalary year should be 377 or 378 days long.)  --Chris Bennett 15:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  question about sentence 

message: Since Patrick's mailbox is overfull, I'm going to ask it here.
I'm wondering why you added this and whether it's going anywhere.  Currently it just looks like a random fact, unrelated to anything else that's in the article.  That makes it a candidate for deletion due to marginal relevance. 
It might be a reasonable observation if the Julian calendar article had a section on dominical letters, but there is a perfectly good separate article on that.
If I don't hear a case for this by tomorrow I'm going to delete it.
--Chris Bennett 00:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I started to add technical information about the Julian calendar, similar to that in the article on the Gregorian calender. I plan to mention and link dominical letter.--Patrick 06:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: It just silly to object to basic information such as the 28-year cycle.--Patrick 22:34, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Julian Calendar#Cycle|Cycle section]]

message: I'm baffled by this date change - this article mentions Founder's Day on 21st April? What is that? According to http://personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/caesar.html - in 153BC the previous start of year was March 25th.
This article: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Egypt/ptolemies/chron/roman/chron_rom_cal.htm
which seems very good holds that the previous date was Ides of March (which is the 15th March), or (controversially) May 1st.
Anyone got evidence for dates or can confirm the dates given in the tynedale article?
Thanks,
Steve
:As the author of the Tyndale site, thanks for the kudos ;-))
:The change to January 1 is discussed on that site in the "analysis" section under AUC 600 = 154 (or directly at http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Egypt/ptolemies/chron/roman/154bc.htm) -- two sources that are available online are Livy, Periochae 47.13 (http://www.livius.org/li-ln/livy/periochae/periochae046.html#47) and the Fasti Praenestini (http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/verrius_frag.html#3 -- in Latin).  Livy repeatedly mentions the consuls taking office on 15 March (not 25 March) before that, see e.g. Livy 22.1 for 217 BC (http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=Liv3His.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=64&division=div2).  The controversy about whether consuls took office on 1 May before 222 BC is discussed on my site at http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Egypt/ptolemies/chron/roman/222bc.htm
:As far as I know the statement about 21 April being the start of the AUC year is wrong.  This is the date of the Parilia which was celebrated as the anniversary of the foundation of Rome, but an anniversary is not the same as being the start of the AUC year.  (For example, 1 January, the start of the Christian year, is not the anniversary of the birth of Christ.)  The AUC year is always equated with a consular year in any text I've ever seen. However I've never bothered to correct this since I haven't checked out the other part of the statement, that this is somehow connected with the date of Easter, which I've also never seen anywhere else, but for all I know might be true.
:--Chris Bennett 05:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS:  The statement about AUC years being based on the Parilia is probably based on Censorinus, who equates AD 238 with AUC 991, and states that AUC years were based on the Parilia.  (De die natali 21.6: "a Roma autem condita nongentesimus nonagensimus primus, et quidem ex Parilibus, unde urbis anni numerantur").  This is certainly not how AUC years are accounted by earlier historians, but by Censorinus' time the consulate was pretty much a ceremonial office, and usually changed several times a year.  It looks like scholarly pedants of the day were rebasing the system, so the statement may actually be true for the third century AD.  But I think its excessive to regard it as "formally" starting on this date -- there's no evidence that Varro thought of it this way, for example.   --Chris Bennett 16:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change of Start of Year 

message: My feeling is that this is somehow relevant to Easter, as Roman Calendar March 15th is very close to Gregorian March 20-21. Did the fixed date Ides not fall on the Equinox? May 1st is also a festival, of course. This April date I am sure have seen before but in a different context in relation to Bede and the Gregorian Calendar.
Was the point of the change of calendar that March 15th was no longer the Equinox?
Thanks for that article, it's made a lot of things much clearer.
My educated guess would be that the previous start of year was on or close to a festival.
Steve
:The Ides was not a fixed date (in principle), it was just the 13th or 15th date of the month.  Every month had an Ides -- see the Roman calendar article.  After the Julian calendar was installed it did become fixed, but was not deliberately aligned to the equinox, which in any case was held to be March 25.  --Chris Bennett 14:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AUC Year 

message: Just as a piece of information for anyone else investigating, I had read that Julius Caesar was making use of the superior Egyptian calendar, but according to the article on Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar
their calendar was not solar or lunar but worked from Sirius. It does seem likely that he was making use of their calendar, however.
:The Egyptians had been playing with a Julian like calendar -- IIRC that was what the Canopus Decree was requiring -- but they never did use it. Francis Davey 13:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article already indicates that Caesar's reform had input from Sosigenes of Alexandria, which we know from Pliny.  Francis is surely correct that Sosigenes got the idea from the Canopic reform of 238 BC.  This was almost certainly not an Egyptian reform but a Greek reform of the Egyptian calendar (which is probably one reason it failed).  The idea can be traced earlier.  The Almagest contains a number of dates in the calendar of Dionysius, which has been shown to have been a 365.25-day zodiacal calendar with a new year at the summer solstice.  The epoch of this calendar was the summer solstice before the accession of Ptolemy II, in 285 BC.  --Chris Bennett 17:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egyptian Calendar 

message: :The notation "Old Style" (OS) is sometimes used to indicate a date in the Julian calendar, as opposed to "New Style" (NS), which indicates a date in the Gregorian Calendar. This notation is used when there might otherwise be confusion about which date is found in a text.
The above is not true. For example Charles I was executed on January 30 1648 Old Style and January 30 1649 New Style. New Style does not mean that the date is under the Gregorian Calendar, rather the year is adjusted to the January 1 instead of what ever start of year was used in contemporary documents. But the Julian calender month and day date is taken as the New Style date until the country where the event took place changed to the Gregorian calender. --Philip Baird Shearer 01:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: OS NS

message: I added some lines concerning the Berber calendar, which is used in Nortern Africa. If someone wishes to add something about it (the relevant article is missing), you can look at the it.wiki article (which is a featured article). --Vermondo 12:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed "Muslim countries don't follow at all." because Turkey does use the Gregorian calendar (since 1926) and virtually all Muslim countries use it for business purposes. Furthermore, I know that all Saudi Arabian laws are dated in both the Saudi version of the Islamic calendar and in the Gregorian calendar. The subject is complicated enough to warrant a separate section, but in the Gregorian calendar article, not here. — Joe Kress 02:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Berber calendar

message: In his Opus Maius, Roger Bacon advocated reforming the Julian calendar because during his life time the vernal equinox was already nine days ahead of March 21st (the vernal equinox decreed by the Council of Nicea).  Since the Wikipedia article on Roger Bacon references and links to the Julian calendar article, should not a reciprocal link be included?  And perhaps some note that Roger Bacon realized the errors in the Julian calendar and the problem of celebrating Easter on the correct day.  He was disciplined and largely ignored or suppressed by his superiors for his ideas and teachings. 
Best wishes, Jon Moss 18:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be better to put this into the Gregorian Calendar article.  The History section there is missing a lot of background like this.  Not just Bacon, also Sacrobosco and (IIRC) Grosseteste were early advocates of reform.  --Chris Bennett 19:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roger Bacon's Plea for Calendar Reform 300 Years Before Gregorian Calendar 

message: I have a few questions regarding 46 BC (the "last year of confusion" – but I am still confused).
Is the following lost in antiquity, or is there a way to get this kind of detail?:
1. What were the names of the two temporary months added between November and December?
:Two letters of Cicero mention Intercalaris Prior and Intercalaris Posterior.  You sometimes see them called Undecember and Duodecember in modern accounts; I don't know the basis for this but it is wrong.  Will add a comment on the point when I get time.
2. What were the actual lengths for these two months (i.e., how does 22-23-22 split into two months)?
:No one knows.
3. What were the naming conventions for all those one-time days within those two months?
:They will have had a Kalends, a Nones and an Ides like any other month.  No one knows the placement of the Nones and the Ides.  I would guess that the Nones was the 7th and the Ides the 15th, with a long countdown towards the next Kalends.
4. Where did they add the one-time-adjustment (the 23-days added to the 28-day February of 46 BC)?  Should I assume that the action followed the practice for ntercalaris years (which you so eloquently described in the first paragraph of the "Motivation" section)?  If so, the 23 days were added "between" the 24th and 25th.  Alternatively, were they added a month-end (i.e., after the 28th day)?
:They are said to have been added "between" November and December, and the arithmetic of a 445 day year suggests that they did not steal days from November in the way that a reglar intercalaris stole days from February.
5. What were the naming conventions for these 23 additional days added to February in 46 BC?  I am sure that they could not use the "a.d.VI.bis.Kal.Mar." designation twenty-three times.  Although it was a one-time deal, there must have been some kind of naming convention.  If they followed the naming convention for prior (pre-47 BC ntercalaris years – I am still clueless as to what they called them.  So, if anyone knows – that would be super!
:The Intercalaris inserted after the Terminalia was a regular Intercalaris following the regular numbering conventions, whatever they were.  For the dates before Kal. Int., there is some doubt as to what this was.  As well as the expected dates a.d. Kal. Mart, we have dates a.d. Terminalia, which could be appropriate, but also dates a.d. Feralia and a.d. Quirinalia -- i.e. to the major festivals in late Februarius (though no a.d. Lupercalia, at least not yet).  We also have an a.d. Terminalia date in a year which we know was NOT intercalary.  For the Intercalary month itself, it had a Nones on day 5 and an Ides on day 13 (I see this is not in the Roman calendar article, will add when I get the time.) 
355 days in 47 BC.  355+22+23+22+23=445 days in 46 BC.  355+2+2+2+1+1+1+1=365 days in 45 BC.
Cool!  (See, he can be taught!  <grin>)
Great, wonderful, exceptional article!  Your hard work is appreciated.
— Tesseract501 22:25, 14 August 2007 (EST)
:HTH --Chris Bennett 17:25, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Mysterious 46 BC 

message: I am inserting the following on two discussion pages:  "Julian calendar" and "Roman calendar."
:Replying here only
I appreciate all the scholarly effort that went into the writing of the "Julian calendar" and the Roman calendar" pages.  I particularly appreciate your commitment in keeping other contributors focused on the parameters of the articles.  It is refreshing to see pages that keep the focus on the topic at hand, instead of including satellite issues that are covered in other Wiki articles.
I do have two questions.  They are concerning the calendars dealing with the Julian Reform period.  I.e., the actual reform period dealing with the year 45 BC, and the base-line year of 47 BC – without detailing the 47 BC data, we are left to deduce the reform-period’s additions, modifications, and deletions).  Hence, after reading both articles, my lack of deductive reasoning has me derailed.
Question #1 – my concern is regarding two monhs (Quintilis and Sextilis - July and August).  The "Roman calendar" article indicates a pre-Julian Quintilis with a 31-day duration and a Sextilis of 29 days).  How do we resolve this against the adjustments indicated on the "Julian calendar" article?  I.e., 2-day adjustment (addition) in 45 BC for Quintilis; and, no adjustment for Sextilis.
:Julian calendar article is wrong, I've fixed it, thanks.
The following shows the (753 BC?) 
:No, probably fourth century with the Decemvirs.  The Roman calendar is weak on the early history, which is in any case still controversial.  Should fix one day.
355-day calendar that resides on the "Roman calendar" page.  I have added notations at the end of the months, showing the 45 BC adjustments that are referenced on the "Julian calendar" article.  Read my notation on the Quintilis and Sextilis lines.  Based on the two articles, I assume the following:
:Martius (31 days).
:Aprilis (29 days in 753? BC; 30 days (29+1) in 45 BC).
:Maius (31 days).
:Junius (29 days in 753? BC; 30 days (29+1) in 45 BC).
:Quintilis (31 days in 753? BC).  If if this is true, then it must have lost two days by the time 47 BC arrived.  The "Julian calendar" article indicates that 2 days were added to Quintilis (July) on the 45 BC calendar.  If something like that happened in the period between 752 and 47 BC, it would be helpful if the "Roman calendar" article indcated such.  If no historical records detailing this are available, it would still be helpful to have a sentence indicating that such a change appears to have taken place "some time" before (by) 47 BC.  Otherwise, easily confused folks (like me) get turned around when we try to bridge the gap between the two articles and the gray zone that is 48, 47, and 46 BC.
:Sextilis (29 days).  This is a bit mysterious in itself.  When did August (Sextilis) go from 29 days to 31 days?  Did this happen sometime after 753 BC but before 47 BC?  Maybe days were taken away from July?
::Happened with the Julian reform -- again, there is an error in the Julian calendar article on this pont.
:September (29 days in 753? BC; 30 days (29+1) in 45 BC).
:October (31 days)
:November (29 days in 753? BC; 30 days (29+1) in 45 BC).
:December (29 days in 753? BC; 31 days (29+2) in 45 BC).
:Ianuarius (29 days in 753? BC; 31 days (29+2) in 45 BC).
:Februarius (28 days).
Question #2 – the "Roman calendar" article indicates, "When Julius Caesar added a day to September, he did not add it to the end of the month. Rather, the new day that was added was the day after the Ides:
:"a.d. XVIII Kal. Oct. = 18 days before the Kalends of October = 14 September
:"As a result, the position of all the following dates in September got bumped up by one day"
The "Julian calendar" article indicates, "Macrobius states that the extra days were added immediately before the last day of each month to avoid disturbing the position of the established Roman fasti (days prescribed for certain events) relative to the start of the month. However, since Roman dates after the Ides of the month counted down towards the start of the next month, the extra days had the effect of raising the initial value of the count of the day after the Ides."
So, which article is correct (or is it that the historical sources disagree:  Macrobius, and the unreferenced source on the "Roman calendar" page)?  
:Roman calendar is wrong, Julian calendar is right.  Joe Kress pointed out this problem at one time, and it got fixed in one article but not both.  Thanks for pointing out the inconsistency, will fix.
Or, is this apparent disagreement concerning September alone (i.e., were the adjustment added the-day-after-Idus for September, but the end-of-month for other months)?  The naming conventions that I have seen for September run consistently from Idus thorugh month-end.
Or, are they both correct?  Was the September addition made by Caesar, as referenced in the "Roman calendar" article, something that predates 45 BC?  Was this omething Julius did to September BEFORE the Julian period.  E.g., September 47, 48, or 49 BC, or even earlier.  If so, it might be worthwhile to clarify this in the article.
Thanks again for sharing all the great information that exists on the two pages.  You have pulled together a truckload of valuable information from dozens of sources.  Great job at bringing it all together in clear and thoughtful articles.
By the way, I would love to see listed details (month-name and day break-outs) for the year 46 BC too – but that’s just because I love lists.  You know, in your spare time <grin>
:see above -- can't be done for the special intercalary months.
— Tesseract501 00:05, 15 August 2007 (EST)
:HTH --Chris Bennett 17:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  47 BC versus 45 BC 

message: "Note that as a consequence of change of New Year, 1 January 1751 to 24 March 1751 were non-existent dates in England."
I've understood that England did both the first-of-the-year change and the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the same year: a few months apart in 1752.  If the above sentence is correct, then I think it needs some further explanation.  Thanks.  --Hordaland (talk) 11:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've clarified that comment and made it a footnote because it is a minor aspect. — Joe Kress (talk) 07:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  1751? or 1752? 

message: Justinian II was declared consul:
Hic depositus est Caedual, qui et Petrus, rex Saxonum, sub die XII Kalendarum Maiarum, indictione II; qui uixit annos plus minus XXX, imperante domno Iustiniano piissimo Augusto, anno eius consulatus IIII, pontificante apostolico uiro domno Sergio papa anno secundo. --Dojarca (talk) 04:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justinian II 

message: 1) There is no Roman text in existence with a date of "a.d. VI Kal.Mart. posteriorem".  The only text to use the term "posterior" in connection with the bissextile is Celsus, and what he says is quoted above.  This supposed "date" does not exist.
2) Ideler's discussion of this point can be read at  and .  Its in German of course, but it's pretty straightforward.  Two points are clear: 
:(a) He does not use "posterior" as a date either, he just says that the term has to be interpeted as being the day which is furthest from the Kalends of March, rather than in the ordinary sense of "after" or "later".
:(b) He gives no justification for this unusual interpretation, he simply says that this is what it means.  How does he know this?  He doesn't say.   I think the only way it could be proved would be to find a text mentioning two other days between the Ides of a month and the following Kalends which describes the earlier date as "posterior" or the later date as "prior".  Failing that, the only reason I can see not to accept the ordinary interpretation of the word is that it conflicts with the later position of the bissextile day.  That is circular reasoning.
::Coincidentally, I just ran into a casual mention of the bissextum as being 25 February in the first century AD, with no indication that the point is debated, in an article written in 1997.  Nevertheless, I still believe it is true that there is no scholarly consensus on the question.  However, I think this reflects lack of interest in a small and unimportant issue, and a desire to avoid wasting time on small unexplained problems about which there is very little evidence.  "Dispute" is probably too strong a word.
3) The feast day of St Mathias is not evidence for the position of the bissextile in the first three centuries AD.  There is no reason to believe that this feast existed at that time, and very good reason to believe it didn't.  Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say in its article on Ecclesiastical Feasts at :
::Prototypes and starting-points for the oldest ecclesiastical feasts are the Jewish solemnities of Easter and Pentecost. Together with the weekly Lord's Day, they remained the only universal Christian feasts down to the third century (Tertullian, "De Bapt." 19: Origen, "Contra Celsum", VIII, 22). Two feasts of Our Lord (Epiphany, Christmas) were added in the fourth century; then came the feasts of the Apostles and martyrs, in particular provinces.
Whether or not the church calendar is a "continuous record", the fact of the matter is that it does not go back far enough to be relevant.
:Further to this:  I have found an extensive discussion of this whole issue in a paper by Sternkopf (JCP 41 (1895) 718-733) available at .  Sternkopf's conclusion is that the term "bis sextum" originally referred to the biduum of Celsus, i.e. that it didn't actually identify a specific intercalary day, and the point was deliberately left vague.  In this way, February always had 28 days.  
:He thinks that there were only a couple of issues on which it mattered which day was intercalary.   The one on which we have direct evidence was legal. Another text in the Digest (IV.4.3 -- ) shows that Celsus' need to distinguish an intercalary day arose from a very specific issue -- if a man turned 25 on a.d. VI Kal Mart, which day represented the moment at which he attained his majority?  He regards Ideler's argument as specious (as do I).  He also makes a circumstantial argument, based on pre-Julian intercalary practice, that the Regifugium was celebrated on the second of the two days in a leap year (I am not convinced by this, I think it conflicts with the notion that February always had 28 days).  He does not consider the effect of the biduum on the nundinal cycle.  
:His view is that the reduction of the 48-hour day to two distinct days in ordinary use was fairly recent in Censorinus' time, noting that he says that the intercalary day is "now" called the bis sextum (quod nunc bis sextum vocatur). 
:I don't agree with all of this but the basic concept makes a lot of sense to me. --Chris Bennett (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bissextile Desiderata 

message: On the other matter:  The "28-day intercalary month" should be debated in the Roman calendar article, not here.  But I can't help noting that, when Mr Anonymous first commented on Celsus, he specifically pointed out that Celsus' 28 days was an error for 27.  I agreed -- and ever since he has insisted Celsus was correct after all.  He gave no reason for changing his mind, but it is completely clear that he has no knowledge of the literature beyond what is accessible through Wikipedia.  Apparently he took this position because I didn't.  
--Chris Bennett (talk) 01:41, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  28-day intercalary month