Mercedonius (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "Work Month").) before beginning to be treated as nouns in their own right. ' seems to derive from ', meaning "wages"., also known as Mercedinus, Interkalaris or Intercalaris ( la, mensis intercalaris), was the intercalary month of the Roman calendar. The resulting leap year was either 377 or 378 days long. It theoretically occurred every two (or occasionally three) years, but was sometimes avoided or employed by the Roman pontiffs for political reasons regardless of the state of the solar year. Mercedonius was eliminated by Julius Caesar when he introduced the

Julian calendar The Julian calendar, proposed by Roman consul Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on , by edict. It was designed with the aid of Greek mathematicians and astronomers such as Sosigenes of Alexandr ...

in 45 BC.

History

This month, instituted according to Roman tradition by Numa Pompilius, was supposed to be inserted every two or three years to align the conventional 355-day Roman year with the

solar year A tropical year or solar year (or tropical period) is the time that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the sky of a celestial body of the Solar System such as the Earth, completing a full cycle of seasons; for example, the time f ...

. The decision of whether to insert the intercalary month was made by the pontifex maximus, supposedly based on observations to ensure the best possible correspondence with the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

s. Unfortunately the pontifex maximus, who would normally be an active politician, often manipulated the decision to allow friends to stay in office longer or force enemies out early. Such unpredictable intercalation meant that dates following the month of Februarius could not be known in advance, and further to this, Roman citizens living outside Rome would often not know the current date. The exact mechanism is not clearly specified in ancient sources. Some scholars, such as Ludwig Ideler, Henry G Liddell, the staff writers of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and Elias Bickerman hold that in intercalary years February's length was fixed at 23 days and it was followed by a variable length ''mensis intercalaris'' with 27 or 28 days. This view is followed in generalist surveys of calendrical history such as those of D E Duncan, G R Richards or A Aveni. However, following a discussion of intercalation in A. K. Michels, ''The Calendar of the Roman Republic'' (Princeton, 1967) 145–172, the standard reference on the pre-Julian calendar, some specialist studies of the pre-Julian calendar published since 1967 claim that in intercalary years Februarius was set at either 23 or 24 days, and followed by an intercalary month of 27 days.Some of these writers assume that the various extracts from the Roman jurist Celsus (''Digest'' volume 39) quoted in the Significations efinitionsof Justinian's Law Code (''The Enactments of Justinian, The Digest or Pandects'', tr. S P Scott, Cincinnati 1932 available a

develop an argument. This is not the case in Book 50, which is a series of unrelated dictionary definitions. Whichever interpretation is correct, the days ''a.d. VI Kal. Mart.'' to ''Prid. Kal. Mart.'', normally referring to the end of February, were in intercalary years the concluding days of the ''mensis intercalaris''. The month was eliminated by Julius Caesar when he introduced the

in 46 BC.

Notes

References

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External links

Roman Dates
Months Months of the Roman calendar

History

See also

Notes

References

External links