These "perturbed months" occurred in the second half of the eighth century, at the beginning of Roman history.11 What is more, we have
6 Roscher, Die Sieben- und Neunzahl im Kultus und Myihus der Griechen, ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (1904): "Die beiden Arten von Fristen schon bei Homer und ebenso auch im altesten Kultus nebeneinander vorkommen" (p. 54). "In der Zeit des alteren Epos herrschend gewordene 9-tagige Woche" (p. 73).
7 Cf. Ovid Metamorphoses vii. 23 ff.; xiii. 951; xiv. 57.
8 Roscher, Die Sieben- und Neunzahl. 9 Roscher, Fristen und Wochen.
10 The sidereal month, or the period of time during which the moon completes a revolution in relation to the fixed stars is 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes. But the phases of the moon change according to the synodical month of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes; after a synodical month the moon returns to the same position in relation to die sun as viewed from the earth.
11 It was probably these changes that caused the gods in The Clouds of Aristophanes to accuse the moon of having brought disorder in the calendar and in the cult. Aristophanes, The Clouds 11. 615 ff.
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actual dates like "the 33rd day of the month," cited in the Babylonian tablets of that period.12
Thus the month which was equal to thirty days changed to thirty-six and then to twenty-nine and a half days. The last change was simultaneous with the change of the terrestrial orbit to one of 365% days' duration.
Years of Ten Months
When the month was about thirty-six days and the year between 360 and 365/4 days, the year must have been composed of only ten months. This was the case.
According to many classical authors, in the days of Romulus the year consisted of ten months, and in the time of Numa, his successor, two months were added: January and February. Ovid writes: "When the founder of the city [Rome] was setting the calendar in order, he ordained that there should be twice five months in his year. . . . He gave his laws to regulate the year. The month of Mars was the first, and that of Venus the second. . . . But Numa overlooked not Janus and the ancestral shades [February] and so to the ancient months he prefixed two." 1
Geminus, a Greek astronomer of the first century before the present era, says similarly that it was Romulus who (in the eighth century) established the year of ten months.2 Aulus Gellius, a second century author, writes in his Attic Nights: "The year was composed not of twelve months, but of ten."3 Plutarch remarks that in his day there was a belief that the Romans, in the time of Romulus, computed the year "not in twelve months, but in ten, by adding more than thirty days robin-bobin
to some of the months."4 At the beginning of Numa's reign the ten-month year was still the official one.5 "March was considered the first month until the reign of Numa, the full year before 12 Kugler, Babylonische Zeitordnung, p. 191, note, i Ovid Fasti i. 27 ff.
2 Geminus, "Introduction aux phenomenes" in Petau, Uranologion (1630).
3 Aulus Gellius Nodes Atticae iii. 16. 4 Plutarch, The Roman Questions, xix. 5 Eutropius Brcvarium return rornanorum i. 3 says: "Numa Pompilius divided the year into ten months." This must refer to the beginning of Numa's reign, when the calendar of Romulus was still valid.
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that time containing ten months," wrote Procopius of Caesarea, who lived in the closing years of the Roman Empire.6 The fact that, in Romulus' time, the first month was named in honor of Mars and the second in honor of Venus shows the importance of these two deities in that period of history. July was named Quintilis (the fifth). The difference of two months still survives in the names September, October, November, and December, which denote the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months, but according to present-day reckoning they are the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months, respectively.
Not only was the year divided into fewer than twelve months, but also the zodiac, or the path of the sun and the moon across the firmament, at present consisting of twelve signs, at one time had eleven and at another time ten signs. A zodiac of fewer than twelve signs was employed by the astrologers of Rabylonia, ancient Greece, and other countries.7 A Jewish song in the Aramaic language which is included in the Seder Service refers to eleven constellations of the Zodiac.
The calendars of the primitive peoples disclose their early origin by the fact that many of them are composed of ten months, and some of eleven months. If the time of the lunar revolution was thirty-five days and some hours, the year was something over ten months long.
The Yurak Samoyeds reckon eleven months to the year.8 The natives of Formosa, too, have a year of eleven months.9 The year of the Kamchadals is made up of ten months, "one of which is said to be as long as three." 10 The inhabitants of the Kingsmill Islands in the Pacific, also called the Gilbert Islands, near the equator, use a ten-month period for their year.11 In the Marquesas (in Polynesia
6 Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, Bk. V, "The Gothic War" (transl. H. B. Dewing, 1919), Sec. 31.
7 Boll, Stemglaube und Stemdeutung, p. 92; A. del Mar, The Worship of Augustus Caesar, pp. 6, 11, with references to Ovid, Virgil, Pliny, Servius, and Hyginus.
8 M. P. Nilsson, Primitive Time-Reckoning (1920), p. 89.
9 A. Wirth, "The Aborigines of Formosa," The American Anthropologist, 1897.
10 A. Schiefner, Rulletin de FAcadSmie de St. Petersbourg, Hist.-phil. Cl., XIV (1857), 198,201
f.
11 H. Hale, Ethnography and Philology: U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-42, VI (1846), 106, 170.
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south of the equator) ten months form a year (tau or puni), but the actual year of 365 days is also known.12
The Toradja of the Dutch East Indies compute time in moon-months. Each year, however, a period of two or three months is not brought into the computation at all, and is omitted in time reckoning.13
The Chams of Indo-China have a calendar of only ten months to the year.14 The natives in some islands of the Indian Ocean also observe ten months to the year.15
The aborigines of New Zealand do not count two months in the year. "These two months are not in the calendar: they do not reckon them; nor are they in any way accounted for."ie
"Among the Yoruba of South Nigeria the three months—February, March, April—are generally given no specific name."1T
These calendars of primitive peoples are similar to the old Roman calendar. They were not invented in disregard of the solar year ('Tears with less than twelve months are to us the strangest robin-bobin
of phenomena"18); their fault is that they are more constant than the revolution of the earth on her orbit around the sun. The work of adapting the old systems to a new order is still evident in the systems of the aborigines of Kamchatka, South Nigeria, the Dutch East Indies, and New Zealand. Instead of introducing two additional months, as in the reform of Numa, one of the months is extended to triple its length, or a period equivalent to two months is not counted at all in the calendric system.
The abundance of proofs of the existence of a ten-month year is even embarrassing. Since the period when the year was composed of ten months of thirty-five to thirty-six days each was short, how could this ten-month year leave so many vestiges in the calendar systems all over the world? The answer to this question will become simple when we shall find that this was the second time in the history of the
12 G. Mathias, Lettres sur les Isles Marquises (1843), 211.
13 N. Adriani and A. C. Kruijt, De Bare'e-sprekende Toradja's (1912-1914), II, 264.
"Frazer, Ovid's Fasti (1931), p. 386. 1B Ibid.
16 W. Yate (English missionary in the early part of the nineteenth eentury), quoted in Frazer, Ovid's Fasti, p. 386.