Humanity’s Longest Year
The ability to track time, or our own concept of time, is something that the human race has been doing for millennia. The sun and moon have long been used as a guide for timekeeping. From stone monuments to sundials, the path celestial bodies take across our skies have influenced our interpretation of time for ages. However, the consistent calendar in place today is a luxury we take often for granted. As with many modern marvels, everyday objects we currently have were almost unheard of in ancient times.
Many argue as to where and when the calendar was created. Some say ancient Egyptians made the first calendar. Others argue that stone monuments found in the United Kingdom may have been the earliest “calendar” devised. The argument goes back and forth down the never-ending spiral of “what does it mean to track time consistently?”
The Romans in 46 BC were probably asking that very question themselves. The calendar that the Romans used prior to 45 BC was curiously designed. It was a lunar calendar instead of a solar one. The calendar determined the length of the year based on the movement of the moon, but this caused issues. You see, a lunar calendar does not line up with a true solar year, causing the calendar to drift gradually out of sync. The Roman Pontifex Maximus, aka the head of the college of priests, was to monitor the gradual desynchronization of their lunar calendar and add days when needed to keep that calendar in sync.
However, Julius Caesar had been appointed Pontifex Maximus in 63 BC, and then proceeded to travel all across the Roman Empire, fighting back the enemies of Rome. Between the Gallic wars, which spanned form 58 BC to 50 BC, and the civil war that raged within Roman territory, Caesar had been very busy for much of his term as Pontifex Maximus.
Because of this, the Roman calendar was three months behind, a whopping 90 days. Caesar knew of this problem and was determined to solve it. Permanently.
During his fighting, Caesar had spent a fair amount of time in Egypt. He had noticed that the Egyptians had a nearly perfect calendar in place, a calendar based off of the sun. With the help of Sosigenes of Alexandria, Caesar began developing a refined version of the Egyptian calendar.
The Egyptians themselves had a strange way of dealing with tracking months. They split their months evenly into 30 days each and manually added 5 days to the end of each year to keep it on track with a solar year. However, Caesar wanted a calendar that ran on its own. If days needed to be manually added in, the calendar could drift again, causing the same issue that Caesar was currently dealing with.
To solve the problem of manually adding days, Caesar and Sosigenes added the days to various pre-existing months, creating a mixture of 31-day months. They also took two days from February, as the Romans were superstitious about this month. With these changes, the calendar was ready to run on autopilot.
Except for the fact that 365 days was not the exact number of days in a year. Sosigenes explained to Caesar that a solar year was actually around 365.25 days long. This caused the problem of the calendar, once again, drifting out of sync with the true solar year. Caesar and Sosigenes agreed that automatically adding a singular day into the calendar every four years would be the best solution to the problem. They emphasized that this singular day would not be controlled by the Pontifex Maximus in any way. The day would be added automatically and no alterations to it would be done by any party.
Keeping with tradition, it was decided that the extra day would be added to February. Finally, this calendar was ready to be integrated into Roman life.
However, Caesar still had the problem of being 90 days behind the solar year. Festivals were out of place, seasons didn’t line up, and, most importantly to Caesar’s new calendar, the beginning of the next year was not in sync. To solve this problem, Caesar added three extra months to 46 BC, creating a 445-day year. This year became known as annus confusionis, or as we would say it, the “year of confusion”.
This change in calendars set January 1st as the official beginning of a new year. In years to follow, new year’s day was argued against for religious reason. For a vast period of time in mediaeval Christian Europe, the start of a new year could fall anywhere from December 25th to March 25th. Eventually, this became enough of an issue to force another change in the calendars.
In 1582, the Julian Calendar was slightly altered and became known as the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar reinstated January 1st as the beginning of a new year. While the new calendar was arguably different from the Julian Calendar, it took great inspiration from Caesar and Sosigenes’ achievement.
Caesar succeeded in many things in his life. From military prowess, to political achievements. It’s only poetic justice that a bit of his legacy lives on in our everyday lives, just as his legacy has lived on through history.
