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A Supplementary Note on the Julian Calendar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
As students of Roman chronology are aware, all dates between February 24, 700 (54 B.C.)—if not also between 691 (63 B.C.), the year of Cicero's consulship—and the last day of 708 (46 B.C.) can be referred with absolute certainty to the corresponding days of the Julian calendar, with a possible error of one day. The possibility of this minute error lies in the fact that it is not quite certain whether the Kalends of January, 709—the first year of the Julian calendar—corresponded with January 1, 45 B.C., or with January. In Ancient Britain (pp. 714–726), after examining all the relevant literature, I gave reasons for believing that Kal. Ian. 709 fell upon January 1, 45 B.C. One book, however—the third volume of the revised edition of Drumann's Geschichte Roms, which appeared in 1906, just before the manuscript of Ancient Britain went to the printer—was then unknown to me. I will now examine the reasons which the learned editor, Paul Groebe, has given for accepting the view that the first day of 709 was January 2, 45.
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References
page 46 note 1 See my Ancient Britain, pp. 706–714, and Class. Quart. VI. 1912, pp. 73–81Google Scholar. I hope to show hereafter that the correspondence can be as certainly established for all the recorded dates beginning with a. d. V. Kal. Apr. 696.
page 46 note 2 Drumann, W., Gesch. Roms, III2. 774–9Google Scholar.
page 46 note 3 B.G. I. 6, 4.
page 46 note 4 Cf. B.G. I. 50, 5 with Tac. Germ. 11.
page 46 note 5 Cf. Class. Quart. 1912, 79 and n. 5 with Drumann-Groebe III. 776.
page 46 note 6 Groebe adds that the astronomical tables of the Babylonians of the third century B.C. fix the time between 19 and 50 hours; but account must be taken of the relative clearness of the atmosphere. Judeich, W. (Caesar im Orient, 1885, pp. 107 note, 108)Google Scholar fixes the earliest moment of visibility about 33 hours after new moon; and every observant person must have noticed that the crescent is rarely discernible until two days after true new moon.
page 47 note 1 I. 14, 13.
page 47 note 2 Op. cit. p. 776.
page 47 note 3 Journ. of Philology, XXIX. 1903, pp. 98–9Google Scholar.
page 47 note 4 See B.G. VI. 18, 2, and Drumann-Groebe. III. 777, n. 3.