365 day calendar

AdminNosy writes:

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As farmers I can't see ancient peoples getting away with a year much off 365 days for long.

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But that's why the Julian reforms were needed: They were months off the actual date. Under the old system (753 BCE or 1 AUC for "anno urbis conditae), the spring equinox had moved three months by the 1st century BCE. The year was only 355 days long. Julius Caesar was exposed to the better calendar system in Egypt and in 45 BCE, he reformed the Roman calendar. That year, he extended the year to 445 days for that one year in order to get the calendar back in sync with the seasons and then set to 365 days with leap years being 366. Note that the Romans put the leap year day after the 23rd of February, creating a new 24th which would be repeated and then came the 25th. As this day was 6 days before the Kalends of March, it was called a "bissextile" and thus the term you sometimes hear for the leap day: Bisextile.One should point out, though, that Caesar was killed just a few months after this.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

andres writes:

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If the calendar was almost the same as ours, why not use a fixed date?

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Because many of the big Christian holidays are actually converted Jewish holidays. Since the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, they wander through the solar calendar we have today as the lunar and solar calendars don't match.For example, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!