History of the Roman Calendar 

Small technicality - the Julian calendar drifted out of alignment by a few more than 10 days - Pope Gregory's reforms were meant to bring the calendar back to alignment with the calendar at the time of the Council of Nicaea, meaning the three/four day drift between the time of Caesar and the time of the Nicaean council was never corrected. This is why we have the winter solstice (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) on 21/22 December instead of 25 December as in ancient times.

20 seconds of class🙄😪😪 20 minute of learning about the intricacies of the roman calendar🤓🤓👍

*Fun fact:* Speaking of the roman calendar, Caligula during his reign tried to rename the month of September Germanicus (after his father), but he couldn't make it happen. Who did manage to rename September as Germanicus was Domitian, in honor of his presumed victories in Germania, maintaining said name change until his assassination.

The idea of just straight up ‘not knowing what day it is’ because the calendar you use is currently broken by war and religious-political arguments is kind of crazy for a modern person to think about, with how specific and broadly universal our time keeping has gotten. It’s cool how many different influences there were on the Roman Calendar - Jews, Egyptians, Etruscans. Were there any other potential influences too small for the video?

Some additional facts: Maius and Iunius not only are dedicated to Maia and Juno, but even, and more so, to the maiores (the ancestors, especially men) and the iunioners (the young, especially the young girls); Februarius may be interpreted as the month of the Gods of the underworld, but at the same it was a month dedicated mainly to the purification of the self and the state (februatur = to be purified; from here comes the term fever in some romance languages, which is the purification from illness); The time going from January to March was dedicated to the great celestial Gods, the time from April to June to the terrestrial Gods, the time from June to September to the natural Gods and the time from October to December to the chthonic Gods and the ones of Fate.

Fun fact : Since the eastern roman calendar started in septermber, in the island of sardinia it is still called "Capitanni" in Sardinian, which explained means the "head of the year", aka new year's eve. capit-anni : caput -> capit 'head' ; annus -> anni ( genitive ) 'of-the-year'

This is the best explanation of the Roman calendar I've ever seen. Thank you for your hard work to help us learn!

I always thought that "inclusive reckoning" and not having a zero explained why the Greeks and Romans made little headway with mathematics other than geometry. It's still used in French and perhaps other Romance languages when a week is "huit jours" and a fortnight "quinze jours."

There's also the fact that hours of the day were not uniform. There were always 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of light.

This might be one of the most interesting videos I’ve ever seen. Had no idea how deep this went!

My berber tribe in north africa still uses a version of the julian calendar. Due to this, we they are 16 days behind compared to the gregorian calendar

Just a terminology note: the current calendar, the Gregorian calendar, emerged from the Julian calendar, which is almost never referred to as the Roman calendar. In modern terms, the Julian calendar calendar abolished and replaced the Roman Calendar, that refers to the one that had 12, 29 and 31 day months and very commonly intercalary months inserted to keep the months somewhat in place in the seasons.

this is a very good summary of the history of the roman calendar a bit more time would have allowed a deeper dive into the details that were not able to be covered here

I heard one time that someone tried to rename April “Neronius” but the change didn’t take. This is the best video on this subject I’ve ever seen!

Imagine showing up for that meeting on the 11th day before the kalens just to be 1 day too early.

Very interesting video! I've been learning Latin for a while now and have been wondering how the dating system came to be ever since reading about it. Keep up the great work! :)

Well done. Learned a lot from this one.

Thank you for such a awsome video! Impressively well structured and informative!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="105">1:45</a> The Babylonian culture is really fascinating and underrated, actually. It's amazing how incredibly unique (and even alien in a certain way) that civilization was. It's a pity that everything fell apart the moment they enslaved the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem, since the only thing left to them after suffering the Wrath of God was a mad King and two conquerors (one Persian and one Macedonian) who converted the famous city into their war trophy

The story I heard for how January and February happened is related to the Iberian Wars after Rome moved into Spain and Portugal. Because the year started in March, the Consuls had to be in the city in March to assume office, before leaving the city to assume command of whatever armies were abroad. However it could take weeks or months to assume command, and this wasted precious campaign time. So eventually they took the nebulous [Winter] between December and March, turned them into two months and made January the start of the year. The benefit of this was a Consul could assume office, and then be in position with his Consular Army before campaign season could begin, as there wouldn't be much fighting in winter.

In my latin class they make us write he date like the romans did. Its hellish

Is fasti the etymology that lead to the term for fast(think lent not quick)

The video says the exact date when January replaced March as the first month of the year is unknown, but several sources I have seen claim it was in the Lusitani War, led by Viriatus, between 155 and 134 BC "According to Theodor Mommsen,[3] 1 January became the first day of the year in 600 AUC of the Roman calendar (153 BC), due to disasters in the Lusitanian War. A Lusitanian chief called Punicus invaded the Roman territory, defeated two Roman governors, and killed their troops. The Romans resolved to send a consul to Hispania, and in order to accelerate the dispatch of aid, "they even made the new consuls enter into office two months and a half before the legal time" (March 15)."

You taught me so much!! ❤️🇨🇦

Dating system namings through different languages are interesting, too. While English most prominently uses either a religious form (BC and AD) or a non-religious form (BCE and CE) for the years, the non-abreviated German version of those usually are vor Christus / nach Christus (before Christ / after Christ) and vor unserer Zeitrechnung / [nach] unserer Zeitrechnung (before our calendar / [after] out calendar).

Request: Assessing how accurate had Nero and Caligula portrayed in Horrible Histories ( A TV show in the UK, a country which I am studying in) You can visit the channel and watch some videos :D

now i'm not quite sure when i am

In the series Rome, when you showed someone putting a gold marker in the calendar and moving some bead, was that denoting a certain # of days before the kalends/nones/idus?

Well done

I think you people are not aware how the months of September to December being 9 to 12 can be confusing to Portuguese and Italian speakers, the two languages where the words for the numbers are the same as the prefixes in the name of the months Portuguese 7 - sete - setembro 8 - oito - outubro 9 - nove - novembro 10 - dez - dezembro It's very common to see accidents where people not paying attention will make an error when "translating" a number date to a written date or vice versa. By coincidence, Portuguese and Italian are the languages of the regions involved in the Lusitani revolt that resulted in Rome changing the start of the year to January, thus putting their calendar out of sync with months names

So how many days of the week are offset each year and how can we use that to calculate future dates?

Very God background. What years were Augustin peroid?

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="760">12:40</a> the Hebrews influenced us more then we realize

Please Share What Us Our American Calendar Based On Zane Name Of ???! Is It Constantine Roman Calendar and What Year did It Start!??

I’m interested in the month of the year which Rome taxes were reconciled or taken. Was the time period adopted by other countries like America? Aril 15 for example. Can this help settle or narrow the date of the birth of Christ? It kind of makes sense due to the timeframes of taxation. Or is this just coincidence? Latter-Day Saints assert that Christ’s true birth date was April 6th which was through revelation in the early 1800s quite prior to popular worldwide speculation of his birth date.

Bravo.

The truth is their in the book you just gotta understand and connect all the verses in book in order to see a clear point of view or the whole picture of the book...

According to independent scholar Hans-Erdmann Korth, the Julian calendar may not have originated with Julius Caesar, as we believe, but with Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus Thrax, another Roman emperor who lived about 300 years after Julius Caesar. If you can read German, read Korth's interesting though poorly written book, Der Grosste Irrtum der Weltgeschichte.

What year would Julius Ceasar say he was born? When I Google it it comes up with 100 BC , I doubt very much Ceasar would say he was born in 100 BC.

Great video! I'm an absolutely fanatical calendar nerd! For the record, until the 1960s, the Catholic Church continued to use the kalends, nones, & ides in official dating.

how can you say it was year 304

Hello chat

Legacies of ancient Egypt you mean

I thought the letter K was reserved for words borrowed from Greek

According to the Phantom Time Hypothesis, when the AD system was put in around the year 1000 AD, it wasn't really 1000 years after Christ at all, but only about 700 years. 297 years were inserted between August 614 AD and September 614 AD, so that September 614 AD now became September 911 AD. If the Phantom Time Hypothesis is correct, we are actually living in 1727 rather than 2024.

The school even teach the day of death holloween Christmas valentines day all this festivals are all created from romans Greek and Latin they all same family or seed influence the world from their own tradition believes and even churches costum to be followed that's why all the people are divided according from their beliefs

Cezar got influence from the Pharisee threatening him that if he not obey them no one will obey him and consider as a high noble in the society his position or thrown power and wealth is more important than the laws costumes statues or commandments of the most high .. That's why the law changes over the years because of influence of roman pope ,pharasies, or so called saints now a days. if you watch or study the book of john you will know exactly what I'm talking about

If you say yes you’re a silly billy