The calends or kalends ( la, kalendae) is the first day of every month in the Roman calendar. The English word "

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

" is derived from this word.

Use

The

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

called the first day of every month the ''calends'', signifying the start of a new lunar phase. On this day, the

pontiff A pontiff (from Latin ''pontifex'') was, in Roman antiquity, a member of the most illustrious of the colleges of priests of the Roman religion, the College of Pontiffs."Pontifex". "Oxford English Dictionary", March 2007 The term "pontiff" was l ...

s would announce the number of days until the next month at the

Curia Calabra The Curia Calabra was a religious station or '' templum'' used for the ritual observation of the new moon in ancient Rome. Although its exact location is unclear, it was most likely a roofless enclosure in front of an augural hut ''( auguraculum)'', ...

; in addition, debtors had to pay off their debts on this day. These debts were inscribed in the ''kalendaria'', effectively an accounting book. Modern calendars count the number of days ''after'' the first of each month; by contrast, the Roman calendar counted the number of days ''until'' certain upcoming dates (such as the calends, the nones or the

ides Ides or IDES may refer to: Calendar dates * Ides (calendar), a day in the Roman calendar that fell roughly in the middle of the month. In March, May, July, and October it was the 15th day of the month; in other months it was the 13th. **Ides of Mar ...

). The day before the calends was called ''pridie kalendas'', but the day before that was counted as the "third day", as Romans used

inclusive counting Counting is the process of determining the number of elements of a finite set of objects, i.e., determining the size of a set. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every elem ...

. To calculate the day of the calends of the upcoming month, counting the number of days remaining in the current month is necessary, then adding two to that number. For example, April 22 is the 10th day before the calends of May (ante diem decimum Kalendas Maius), because eight days are left in April and both end dates are included in the total.

Computation

The following lines of poetry aid calculations relating to the day of the month from the calends: ''Principium mensis cujusque vocato kalendas: ''Sex Maius nonas, October, Julius, et Mars; ''Quattuor at reliqui: dabit idus quidlibet octo. This means that the first day is called the ''calends''; six days after the calends is the ''nones'' of May, October, July and March, while the nones comes only four days later for the other months; the ''ides'' comes eight days after the nones.

Expressions

The calends was a feature of the Roman calendar, but it was not included in the Greek calendar. Consequently, to postpone something ''ad Kalendas Graecas'' ("until the

Greek calends There are many idioms of improbability, or adynata, used to denote that a given event is impossible or extremely unlikely to occur. In English Events that can never happen *As a response to an unlikely proposition, " when pigs fly", "when pigs h ...

") was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever. This phrase survived for many centuries in Greek ( gr, εἰς τὰς ἑλληνικάς καλένδας) and in the Romance languages ( es, hasta las calendas griegas; it, alle calende greche; french: aux calendes grecques; ro, la calendele grecești; pt, às calendas gregas ; etc.). The Latin term is traditionally written with initial ''K'': this is a relic of traditional Latin orthography, which wrote ''K'' (instead of ''C'' or ''Q'') before the vowel ''A''. Later, most Latin words adopted ''C'', instead. It is sometimes claimed that the kalends was frequently used in formal or high-register contexts, and that that is why it retained its traditional spelling, but there seems to be no source for this.

Use

Computation

Expressions

References

Further reading