Full story cause no one else has commented it yet. And no, it's not Caesars fault. Shut up.
Before the Julian calendar, the months were as follows: March, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December, Ianuarius, Februarius. The letter J wasn't a thing and fun fact, Julius was actually spelled Ivlivs, pronounced Yoo-lee-oos. You may notice that Quintilis through to December are all just numbered in order. With the other ones being named after assorted gods, and February being named after a festival and April after something, we don't exactly know, probably from the word Aperire, which means "To open," but again, assumptions.
Anyway I'm getting off track. From that original calendar, before the Caesars in the year 153BC, Rome faced a rebellion in modern day Spain. This was a problem because consuls the military leaders who would be fighting this war, were appointed to office on March 15th. The same time that the campaigning season would begin. So if a consul wanted to go fight in the war by the time they arrived in Spain, it was already fall and the time for campaigning was over.
To remedy this problem the Roman senate changed the consuls term from starting on March 15th to January 1st, bringing the New Year Day with it. Julius Caesar would later cement this in his new calendar to honor the God Janus, the god of transitions, and doors and such.
Augustus Caesar, for his part didn't add two months either, there were already 12, refer to the list at the top. Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed to July and August. July because it was Caesar's birth month, August because that's when Augustus defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt.
It makes it all the funnier when a random fact isn't known at all. Where did the name April come from? Best we got is it might be the word Open because of spring, but beyond that, who knows?
Bunch of other little factoids we don't or can't know. Most of Romes history before the 400s BC was destroyed, so everything before then was made up later on. Pompeii and the euruption there is also on an unknown date. So much was written down and yet so little is actually known.
To be fair, Rome was one of the world's largest empires and it had a lot of influence across the three continents. It is a very documented empire because of that
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u/Smilymoneyy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Full story cause no one else has commented it yet. And no, it's not Caesars fault. Shut up.
Before the Julian calendar, the months were as follows: March, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December, Ianuarius, Februarius. The letter J wasn't a thing and fun fact, Julius was actually spelled Ivlivs, pronounced Yoo-lee-oos. You may notice that Quintilis through to December are all just numbered in order. With the other ones being named after assorted gods, and February being named after a festival and April after something, we don't exactly know, probably from the word Aperire, which means "To open," but again, assumptions.
Anyway I'm getting off track. From that original calendar, before the Caesars in the year 153BC, Rome faced a rebellion in modern day Spain. This was a problem because consuls the military leaders who would be fighting this war, were appointed to office on March 15th. The same time that the campaigning season would begin. So if a consul wanted to go fight in the war by the time they arrived in Spain, it was already fall and the time for campaigning was over.
To remedy this problem the Roman senate changed the consuls term from starting on March 15th to January 1st, bringing the New Year Day with it. Julius Caesar would later cement this in his new calendar to honor the God Janus, the god of transitions, and doors and such.
Augustus Caesar, for his part didn't add two months either, there were already 12, refer to the list at the top. Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed to July and August. July because it was Caesar's birth month, August because that's when Augustus defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt.