The Calendar

Twenty-seven hundred years ago the calendar had ten months, March, April, May, June, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.  Those last six were what we think of as the numbers five through ten.  Apparently they couldn’t think up any more names for them.  Some of the months had as many as forty days. 

According to Plutarch (46-127 AD), not to be confused with Pluto the friend of Mickey Mouse, Pompilius, who died in 673 BC, decided the calendar was all screwed up so he set out to rearrange things.

Old man Pompilius’ calendar started the year with January, a month he thought up and named after the Roman God Janus.  Janus was noted as the keeper of the gates, and Pompelius felt Janus could transition from the old year to the new as a part of his job.

Pompelius still felt that some months were too long so he also developed another month he named February, and stuck it in after his first month.  February was named for purification, a rite to prepare for spring which was soon coming.

March, named for the God, Mars, remained as before, as did April, possibly named for Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love and Beauty, and associated with the Roman Goddess Venus.

May was named for the Goddess of Spring.

June was named for Juno the Goddess of marriage.

The rest of the months remained the numbers, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.  Nobody seemed to care they weren’t actually those numbered months since the addition of the new first two months.

Everything went along fine with this setup until Julius Caesar came along.  He lived from 100 BC through 44 BC.  Old Julius decided he was too important for folks to forget about him after he died so he decided to name a month after himself to remind everyone he’d been there and done that.  He grabbed the first of those no-name months, Quintilis, and changed its name to July in honor of himself.

Augustus Caesar was the adopted heir of Julius, and as such followed Julius as Emperor.  He was around from 63 BC until 14 AD.  While he was emperor he figured out that if Julius could grab a month and call it his, then so too could he, so he took Sextilis and changed its name to August, and so today, 2000 years later, we have the named months as we know them.
The Photo?  Oh, that's old stone-face Numa Pompelius.