The roman calendar, you can see declension of, comes from the beginning of the roman empire. It was ameliorated many times to make it closer to the solar year and easier to use in the life of roman people becoming more and more modern.

The first roman calendars had only 9 months and ended with a long period without reference to any day or month before a new year starts again. This empty period corresponded to winter. The first months bore names of divinities (like Mars for March or July for Jules), the others was named by a figure (like september, october, ...). Jules (Cesar) added 2 months and gave a name to the rest of the empty period. The result is our 12 months.

Nowadays the traces of these additions are still visible, since Jules made january and february added at the beginning of the year, we have these months of septembre, octobre, novembre and december which do not correspond to the roman names of the figures (septe, octo, nove, dece) 7, 8, 9 and 10 but to 9, 10, 11, 12. They are still shifted by the 2 months added by Jules.

The calendar has no name of days but 3 outstanding events every month : kalends (first day of the month), nones (about the 5th of the month), ides (about the 13th of the month). The days are named by the number of days to the next event, the day which is just before the day of the event is names 'pridie' or 'day before'.

This gives something like : 'ante diem VII ides of july' for 'the 8th day before the ides of july' (yes, moreover they count 1 for the day itself, that is 2 for the day before !). Since the kalends are the first day of the month, the last days of a month refer to the next month, therefore 'the 6th day before july Kalends' is in june 6 (in fact 5) days before the beginning of july, capito ?


©Alain Opériol - 1991-2010 (www.encinaal.fr)