Zenobia Book Series: How February came to be

Calendars and months have changed a lot over the years. Most of this took place before Zenobia’s time but still very thought-provoking. Don't forget to take the discovery quiz at the end. See how much you know of the history of calendars.

The original Roman calendar was said to be invented by Romulus, the first king of Rome, at around 753 BCE (Before Common Era). The calendar started the year in March (Martius) and consisted of 10 months, with 6 months of 30 days and 4 months of 31 days. The winter season was not assigned to any month, so the calendar year only lasted 304 days with 61 days unaccounted for in the winter.

Februarius (February) was not part of the original calendar, but was added (with a variable number of days), as the month preceding the beginning of the year. Sometimes there was an additional intercalary month.

Februarius became known as the purification month or atonement, as the Lupercalia Roman festival suggests. Originally, Februarius may have had 23 days. In time, the calendar was standardized so that it had 12 months with 29 or 31 days, except for Februarius which had 28. Later, Julius Caesar re-standardized the calendar to line up with the seasons.

Julian Calendar Reform

Among the offices Caesar was Pontifex Maximus, the highest Roman priest. The calendar was the province of the priests because it was they who annually picked the dates of the religious festivals. By 46 B.C., what should have been autumn harvest festivals were lining up with the summer. This would be a problem because you can't harvest what hasn't yet grown. When Caesar returned from Egypt to Rome that year, he fixed the Roman calendar, probably based on what he'd learned from the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, in Egypt. (Side note: Alexandria, Egypt had the largest library until Caesar visited. It is also the location where most of book two takes place in Zenobia – Challenging a Legend.)

It’s also said the calendar was changed from the Roman Republican Calendar by Caesar because he was tired of its corruption. Priests back then would exploit the calendar for political reasons, and would add in days, sometimes months, in order to keep favored politicians in office.

The new calendar had an average of 365 ¼ days per year. So to solve this problem, Caesar created a leap year every four years, which meant that every four years, they would repeat February 23. In the Julian calendar, there was never a 29th of February. The year was broken into 12 months: Ianuarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. In 44 B.C. the Romans renamed Quintilis, Iulius, after Julius Caesar, and in 8 B.C. Sextilis was renamed Augustus, after Caesar Augustus.

The major problem with the Julian calendar was the fact that it was off by 11 minutes every year. The Julian system says a year is an average of 365.25 days, when it takes closer to 365.2422 days for the earth to return to the same point while orbiting the sun, putting the calendar off by 11 minutes, or 1 day every 128 years.

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar today. It is derived from the Julian calendar and named after Pope Gregory XIII who decreed the new calendar on February 24th 1582. The Gregorian calendar was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe, with other countries adopting it over the following centuries. The motivation for the Gregorian reform was that the Julian calendar assumes that the time between vernal equinoxes is 365.25 days, when in fact it is almost 11 minutes shorter. The discrepancy results in a drift of about three days every 400 years. At the time of Gregory's reform there had already been a drift of 10 days since Roman times, resulting in the spring equinox falling on 11 March instead of the ecclesiastically fixed date of 21 March, and moving steadily earlier in the Julian calendar. Because the spring equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady movement in the date of the equinox undesirable.

How would you like to lose 10 days in one month?