Since, according to the Gospels, Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection occurred during the Passover season (the Last Supper was a Passover seder), Good Friday and Easter are also tied to the vernal equinox (see Chap ter I).
The Hebrews also celebrated a New Year's Day on the first two days of Tishri (which falls at about the autumnal equinox), and this became the more important of the two occasions. It is celebrated by Jews today as "Rosh Hashonah" ("head of the year"), the familiarly known "Jewish New Year."
A much later example of. a New Year's Day in con nection with the autumnal equinox came in connection with the French Revolution. On September 22, 1792, the French monarchy was abolished and a republic pro 31 claimed The Revolutionary idealists felt that since a new epoch in human history had begun, a new calendar was needed. They made September 22 the New Year's Day and established a new list of months. The first month was Vend6miare, so that September 22 became Vend6 miare 1. . For thirteen years, Vend6miare I continued to be the official New Yeaes Day of the French Government, but the calendar never caught on outside France or,even among the people inside France. In 1806 Napoleon gave up the struggle and officially reinstated the old calendar.
There are two important solar events in addition to the equinoxes. After the vernal equinox, the noonday Sun con tinues to rise higher and higher until it reaches a maximum height on June 21, which is the summer solstice (see Chapter 4), and this day, in consequence, has the longest daytime period of the year.
The height of the noonday Sun declines thereafter until it reaches the position of the autumnal equinox. It then continues to decline farther and farther fill it reaches a minimum height on December 21, the winter solstice and the shortest daytime period of the year.
The summer solstice is not of much significance. "Mid summer Day" falls at about the summer solstice (die tradi tional English day is June 24). This is a time for gaiety and carefree joy, even folly. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is an example of a play devoted to the kind of not-to-be-taken-seriously fun of the season, and the phrase "midsummer madness" may have arisen similarly.
The winter solstice is a much more serious affair. The Sun is declining from day to day, and to a primitive so ciety, not sure of the invariability of astronomical laws, it might well appear that this time, the Sun will continue its decline and disappear forever so that spring will never come again and all life will die.
Therefore, as the Sun's decline slowed from day to day and came to a halt and began to turn on December 21, there must have been great relief and joy which, in the end, became ritualized into a great religious festival, marked by gaiety and licentiousness.
The best-known examples of this are the several days of holiday among the Romans at this season of the year. The holiday was in honor of Saturn (an ancient Italian god of agriculture) and was therefore called the "Satumalia." It was a time of feasting and of giving of presents; of good will to men, even to the point where slaves were given temporary freedom while their masters waited upon them.
There was also a lot of drinking at Satumalia parties.
In fact, the word "saturnalian" has come to mean dis solute, or characterized by unrestrained merriinent.
There is logic, then, in beginning the year at the winter solstice which marks, so to speak, the birth of a new Sun, as the first appearance of a crescent after sunset marks the birth of a new Moon. Something like this may have been in Julius Caesar's mind when he reorganized the Roman calendar and made it solar rather than lunar (see Chap ter I).
The Romans had, traditionally, begun their year on March 15 (the "Ides of March"), which was intended to fall upon the vernal equinox originally but which, thanks to the sloppy way in which the Romans maintained their calendar, eventually moved far out of synchronization with the equinox. Caesar adjusted matters and moved the beg ning of the year to January 1 instead, placing it nearly at the winter solstice.
This habit of beginning the year on or about the winter solstice did not become universal, however. In England (and the American colonies) March 25, intended to repre sent the vernal equinox, remainedthe official beginning of the year until 1752. It was only then that the January I beginning was adopted.
The beginning of a new Sun reflects itself in modem times in another way, too. In the days of the Roman Em pire, the rising power of Christianity found its most dan gerous competitor in Nfithraism, a cult that was Persian in origin and was devoted to sun worship. The ritual cen tered about the mythological character of NEthras, who represented the Sun, and whose birth was celebrated on December 25-about the time of the winter solstice. This was a good time for a holiday, anyway, for the Romans were used to celebrating the SatumaEa at that time of year.
Eventually, though, Christianity stole Mithraic thunder by establishing the birth of Jesus on December 25 (there is no biblical authority for this), so that the period of the winter solstice has come to mark the birth of both the Son and the Sun. There are some present-day moralists (of whom I am one) who find something unpleasantly remi niscent of the Roman Satumalia in the modem secular celebration of Christmas.
But where do the years begin? It is certainly convenient to number the years, but where do we start the numbers?
In ancient times, when the sense of history was not highly developed, it was sufficient to begin numbering the years with the accession of the local king or ruler. The number ing would begin over again with each new kin. Where a city has an annually chosen magistrate, the year might not be numbered at all, but merely identified by the name of the magistrate for that year. Athens named its years by its archons.
When the Bible dates things at all, it does it in this manner. For instance, in II Kings 16:1, it is written: "In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remallah, Ahaz the son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign." (Pekah was the contemporary king of Israel.)
And in Luke 2:2, the time of the taxing, during which Jesus was born, is dated only as follows: "And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria."
Unless you have accurate lists of kings and magistrates and know just how many years each was in power and how to relate the list of one region with that of another, you are in trouble, and it is for that reason that so many ancient dates are uncertain even (as I shall soon explain) a date as important as that of the birth of Jesus.
A much better system would be to pick some important date in the past (preferably one far enough in the past so that you don't have to deal with negative-numbered years before that time) and number the years in progres sion thereafter, without ever starting over.
The Greeks made use of the Olympian Games for that purpose. This was celebrated every four years so that a four-year cycle was an "Olympiad." The Olympiads were numbered progressively, and the year itself was the Ist, 2nd, 3rd or 4th year of a particular Olympiad.
This is needlessly complicated, however, and in the time following Alexander the Great something better was in troduced into the Greek world. The ancient East was being fought over by Alexander's generals, and one of them, Seleucus, defeated another at Gaza. By this victory Seleu cus was confirmed in his rule over a vast section of Asia.
He determined to number the years from that battle, which took place in the Ist year of the 117th Olympiad. That year became Year 1 of the "Seleucid Era," and later years continued in succession as 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. Nothing more elaborate than that.
The Seleucid Era was of unusual importance because Se leucus and his descendants ruled over Judea, which there fore adopted the system. Even after the Jews broke free o If the Seleucids under the leadership of the Maccabees, they continued to use the Seleucid Era in dating their com mercial transactions over the length and breadth of the ancient world. Those commercial records can be tied in with various local year-dating systems, so that many of them could be accurately synchronized as a result.
The most important year-dating system of the ancient world, however, was that of the "Roman Era." This began with the year in which Rome was founded. According to tradition, this was the 4th Year of the 6th Olympiad, which came to be considered as I A.U.C. (The abbrevia tion "A.U.C." stands for "Anno Urbis Conditae"; that is, "The Year of the Founding of the City.")
Using the Roman Era, the Battle of Zama, in which Hannibal was defeated, was fought in 553 A.U.C., while Julius Caesar was assassinated in 710 A.U.C., and so on. This system gradually spread over the ancient world, as Rome waxed supreme, and lasted well into early medieval times.
The early Christians, anxious to show that biblical records antedated those of Greece and Rome, strove to begin counting at a date earlier than that of either the founding of Rome or the beginning of the Olympian Games. A Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived about 1050 A.U.C., calculated that the Patriarch, Abraham, bad been born 1263 years before the founding of Rome. Therefore he adopted that year as his Year 1, so that 1050 A.u.c. became 2313, Era of Abraham.
Once the Bible was thoroughly established as the book of the western world, it was possible to carry matters to their logical extreme and date the years from the creation of the world. The medieval Jews calculated that the crea tion of the world had taken place 3007 years before the founding of Rome, while various Christian calculators chose years varying from 3251 to 4755 years before the founding of Rome. These are the various "Mundane Eras" ("Eras of the World"). The Jewish Mundane Era is used today in the Jewish calendar, so that in September 1964, the Jewish year 5725 began.
The Mundane Eras have one important factor in their favor. They start early enough so that there are very few, if any, dates in recorded history that have to be given negative numbers. This is, not true of the Roman Era, for instance. The founding of the Olympian Games, the Trojan War, the reign of David, the building of the Pyramids, all came before the foundin of Rome and have to be given negative year numbers.