From: utzoo!watmath!pcmcgeer
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: Re5: Gregorian Great Circle
Article-I.D.: watmath.3704
Posted: Wed Oct 27 09:47:57 1982
Received: Fri Oct 29 10:19:16 1982
References: alice.1011

	Sorry, rhm.  The Romans didn't even have a modern calendar until Julius.
What they had was a joint lunar-solar calendar, with intercalary days, kept in
synch by elected officials.  This caused the usual abuses (a favorite trick was
to lengthen years in which there were elections), with the result that the
Roman calendar, which consisted of 12 30-day months plus an arbitrary number
of intercalary days, was out of synch with the sun by something like 15 days
in 44 BC.
	Julius Caesar decided that enough was enough, and whipped out the
Julian calendar with the help of an Egyptian astronomer whose name escapes
me.  It was at that time that the Julian calendar was finalized, with the
28 day February (since the Romans considered the month unlucky, according
to Asimov).
	I don't know whether the year began on January 1 or March 1.
	An excellent discussion of this is in Asimov's collection
Of Time, Space, and Other Things.
					Cheers,
						Rick.