Roman Calendar

Salah, Nisreen; Mohamed, Samy Abd El-Fatah; Abd El-Halem Al-Homosany, Nahed

doi:10.21608/buhuth.2023.233908.1557

Roman Calendar

Document Type : Academic research papers

Authors

¹ Faculty of Women for Arts, Science&amp; Edu Ain Shams University- Cairo-Egypt

² Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman History and Civilization, Faculty of Women, Ain Shams University

³ Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman History and Civilization Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, Egypt

10.21608/buhuth.2023.233908.1557

Abstract

The Romans originally used a lunar calendar, which caused some problems. Consequently, during the monarchical and republican eras, the Romans made several modifications to the calendar until Gaius Julius Caesar, while serving as the High Priest, reformed it by converting it into a solar calendar instead of a lunar one. The calendar remained in this form until the recent reform by Pope Gregory, which resulted in the current Gregorian calendar. Additionally, the Roman calendar underwent changes in the arrangement of months, including the addition of months to the year. These additions altered the meanings and order of some months. However, the Romans did not modify the order of the months to correspond with these additions, and they have remained unchanged to the present day, Furthermore, the Romans were extremely meticulous in organizing their year in the calendar. They arranged the days of the month according to the lunar origin of the calendar. Their organizational skills reached a peak where each day of the year was designated as an official working day, used for court proceedings, legislating laws, conducting elections, or as a religious day and holiday for celebrations, religious festivals, and offering sacrifices to the gods. The surviving inscriptions on ancient calendars provided information about the calendar's structure, official and religious working days.

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