13. Kalends, nones and ides
THE RECKONING OF TIME
daysweremissingfromtheiryear^decidedtointercalatebya¢xedrule,so thatevery eighth yearthey intercalated ninety days,which theycounted as three months of thirty days. The Romans took it into their heads to imitate this method, but in vain, for they forgot the one day which we mentioned above, added by themselves to the Greek ¢gure in honour of the odd number. For that reason, the number and order could not coincide after eight years.149 He who wishes to know what error arose and how it was overcome may ¢nd it in the aforementioned disputation of Chorus and Praetextatus, from which we have made these excerpts.
At last Julius Caesar, imitating the Egyptians, instituted a year according to the measure of the Sun, such as has been maintained to this day, by adding ten days to the old observations, so that the total came to 365 days, /325/ the period of time in which the Sun lights up the zodiac.
And lest the quarter-day be wanting, he ordained as well that in the fourth year, the priests, who were responsible for months and days, should intercalate one day in the same month and place where men of old had intercalated the month, that is, before the ¢fth day from the end of the month of February; and he ordered that it be called the bissextus.150 Every intercalation was assigned to the month of February, for this was the last month of the year. They did this in imitation of the Greeks,151 for they inserted the extra days in the last month of their year. On one point, in fact, they di¡ered from the Greeks, for while they intercalated after the end of the last month, the Romans intercalated, not at the end of February, but after its 23rd day, that is, when the Terminalia was over. Then they added the remaining days of February, which were ¢ve, after the intercalation. They were following, I believe, the ancient custom of their religion so that March would follow directly upon February.152
13. KALENDS, NONES AND IDES
In olden times, the responsibility for observing the ¢rst appearance of the new Moon and of announcing its sighting to the royal sacri¢cing-priest
149 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.13.5^11 (62.6^63.15).
150 Ibid. 1.14.3 (66.7^14), 6 (66.26^67.7).
151 This statement is erroneous, but Bede came by it honestly. The text of the Disputatio Chori et Praetextati in the ''Sirmond'' group of MSS contains an interpolated sentence extracted from Saturnalia 1.13.14 (64.1^3), describing a Roman experiment with intercalation in imitation of the Greeks. Cf. Jones, BOT 349.
152 Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.13.15 (64.6^12).