the early history of the Gregorian Calendar.
Roman Mythology
by Stewart Perowne
Library of the World’s Myths and Legends
New York – Peter Bendrick Books, c. 1969, 1983.
Ch 1 Origins
p8
“In the neolithic era, a people whom the Romans called Ligures, and we Ligurians entered Italy. They came from north Africa, by way of Spain, and settled in the coastland round Genoa which we still know as Liguria.”
c 4000 – 3000 BC
“At some date in the 3rd millennium BC came other invaders, again from the North … bearing a wholly new element. The element was metal, and the metal was bronze.”
1000 – 1100 BC
“In the eleventh Century BC, the Bronze-agers were supplanted by yet a third wave of northerners armed this time with iron. They are known as Villanovans, from Villanova, a small town near Bologna…”
800 – 900 BC
“This time the new arrivals were highly civilised. They came from … Asia Minor, and are known as Etruscans [with a taste for good living and maritime commerce].”
“… the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, some of them hardly a hundred miles from Rome and so numerous that the region was called Magna Graecia.”
Ch 2 Gods
p 12
“Romulus is traditionally held to have founded Rome in the year 735 BC.”
“It is here that the Tiber is first fordable, thus providing a vital north-south link. So it was on those two hills nearest the river that the first settlements arose.”
p13
“Jupiter was the supreme god of the confederation of the forty-seven Latin cities, and they met [n Rome] for celebrations every spring and autumn.”
Numa = 2nd king of Rome c. 715 – 673 BC
p18
“But not only was [Janus] the god of the gate, he was the gate itself.”
“… in the primitive calendar [23 February] was reckoned as the last or terminal day of the year.”
p23
“Febris brought fever, malaria, and was attended by Tertiana and Quartiana.”
Ch 3 Worship
Ch 4 The State Cult
p35
“… the Fasti of Ovid, a poem of 4792 lines in six books, in which month by month and day by day the poet describes the festivals of the first half of the year.”
“The Roman Calendar passed through three distinct phases. First… the Romans observed a year of ten months… they reckoned ten months from March to December, and simply ignored the ‘dead’ months…”
“This primitive Roman calendar started with the month of Mars (March), followed by Aprilis from aperire, to open… Then came May, dedicated to Maia, an ancient goddess, consort perhaps to Vulcan, next June which commemorated the Etruscan deity Uni or Juno. The remainder were simply numbered, Quintilis and Sextilis… followed by September to December… Quintilis and Sextilis were replaced in imperial times by July and August in honour of Julius Caesar and Augustus.”
~ 900 BC
“Stage two was introduced by the Etruscans, who added January and February, thus bringing the ‘dead’ months to life…”
“… the first of March remained the first day of the year until … 153 BC.”
“February was dedicated… to Februus who was in later days identified with Dis, the Latin Pluto. February was the month during which the city was purified by appeasing the dead with offerings and sacrifices, called februalia. Februus is no more than a personification of this rite.”
p36
“This calendar was, like all early calendars, lunar. March, May, Quintilis, and October had 31 days each, February 28, and the rest 29: total 355. … a month was… intercalated… from time to time, being placed between the 23rd and 24h February.”
[NB naturally - where else would you intercalate a month?]
3rd Stage
“The intercalation was so carelssly done that by the time of Julius Caesar (who as Pontifex Maximus was responsible for the calendar) the official year had become three months ahead of the solar. He therefore borrowed and improved the calendar from Egypt in the year 46 BC. This is the Julian calendar…”
“[The Julian calendar] was amended by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.”
“… the days of the month were not numbered serially, as they now are. The month had three fixed lunar points; kalends, the first day; ides, the full moon; and nones midway between, so called because it was the ninth day counting inclusively from the full moon.”
“… the days of the new moon, first quarter, and full moon were observed. The rest of the month, when the moon was waning, and therefore unlucky, had no name at all.”
p37
“Saturn, the god of sowing…”
p39-41
“… the calendar shows both political and military development, but its chief emphasis is n agriculture which as the basis of the life of these people.”
p41
“March… was devoted predominantly to military preparations.”
“April is more concerned with agriculture.”
“May was comparatively slack, because the precautions taken in April were considered adequate.”
movable feast = weather-dependent
p42
“In June, the chief task was… the cleaning of the penus of Vesta.”
“july brought a group of festivals so obscure that it is profitless to examine them.”
[NB what???]
“Harvest festivals began properly in August.”
“Thereafter, the rest of the year, there was nothing to do but plow and sow.”
“But when the autumn sowing was over, on 17 December the Saturnalia was celebrated, Saturnus being connected with the root meaning ‘sow.’”
p45
“We find, in short, that Rome had come to worship four superior gods… namely Janus, jupiter, mars and Quirinus, and one goddess, Vesta.”
Ch 5 The Newcomers
p56
“Gladiators perpetuated the typically barbarous Etruscan custom of killing slaves on their master’s grave… the idea being that instead of killing men like brutes, it was more civilised to watch them kill each other like men. Gladiators were first seen in Rome in 264 BC.”
p62
260 – 205 BC
“… two forward-looking innovations were to come. First, the magistrates ordered a combined lectisternium and supplicantio, in which twelve Gods, Greek and Roman, were displayed side by side… henceforth the religion of Rome was to be not Roman but Graeco-Roman.”
“… in April [204 BC], the Great Mother, or Cybele as she was known, arrived in Rome…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele
acknowledged on April 4th
“with her came her partner Attis and his devotees.”
c180 BC
“The Senate not only forbade Bacchus worship in Rome, but took unprecedented and high-handed action of compelling her Latin allies to enforce a similar ban.”
Ch 6 Epicurians and Stoics
p73
“[a particular school of Greek philosophy] proclaimed an ethic which Christianity in large measure assimilated…”
quoting Epicurus
“… Death, the king of terrors, is nothing to us, because as long as we exist Death is not present, and when Death is come we are no more.”
p73-4
quoting Epicurus
“It were better to follow the fairy-tales of gods than to be a slave to the determinism of the scientists. The one does suggest a hope of appeasing the gods by reverencing them, but the other implies a necessity which is implacable.”
Lucretius On the Nature of Things
Horace
Zeno
Ch 7 Immortal Longings
Manes – Roman term for the dead
Ch 8 Orontes Nile and Tiber
“Syrians introduced the crucifix in the 6th century.”
Ch 9 Moses and Mithras
plain of Shinar – perfectly suited for early astronomy
p103
“In the sixth century BC, Persia became lord of Babylonia and Assyria, that is of southern and northern Mesopotamia, and then of Lydia and Ionia.”
Ch 10 The Eternal City
Julius Caesar assassinated March 15th 44 BC
p113
“At the battle of Actium in 31 BC Antony and Cleopatra were defeated and fled to Egypt where they took their own lives. This meant that Octavian was now master of the Roman world [at 32 years].”
Ch 11 Christ and Caesar
Posted by Not Jack 
Northern Hemisphere – Perpetual Calendar Month
