450 TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD SCIENCE. 



period, who would otherwise have been made to live one year 

 less than history reports. 



To these the following astronomical certainties may be ap- 

 pended. Macrobius (Sat. i. 14) reports that the first day of the 

 Julian Calendar commenced, consistently with the preceding 

 Roman months, with a new moon, the same day on which the 

 crescent appeared in Rome, and this was the case only in — 41, 

 Jan. 1st. Even the Julian coins, struck at the same time, and for 

 the purpose of perpetuating the introduction of the tropic year, 

 represent the crescent as visible on the first day of the first solar 

 January of the Romans, as will be seen in Eckhel's " Doctrina 

 Numorum." According to Petavius, who referred the introduc- 

 tion of the Julian year to — 41, the crescent appeared 22 days 

 prior to the first day of January. 



The last lunar year, the so-called annus confusionis of the Ro- 

 mans, contained, as the ancients report, and as every historian 

 knows, 445 days ; in other words, fifteen lunar months; where- 

 fore that lunar year must have commenced on Oct. 13th, being 

 the 445th day prior to the 1st day of January of the first Julian 

 year. The Romans being in the habit of beginning their lunar 

 months and years with the appearance of the crescent, the annus 

 confusionis must have begun in — 43, Oct. 13, because on that day 

 only the crescent became visible, 445 days prior to the beginning 

 of the first Julian year. According to Petavius, who referred the 

 beginning of the annus confusionis to Oct. 13 in — 45, the Romans 

 had been in the habit of commencing their lunar months 22 days 

 previous to the new moons. Is not this nonsense? 



Many ancient authors (Plutarch, Cass. 63 ; Sueton, Caes. 81 ; 

 Dio, 44, 17 ; Obsequens, c. 127) recount that in the night preced- 

 ing Caesar's assassination i.e. on March 14th, Calpurnia, Caesar's 

 wife was awakened by the light of the full moon (lunae splendore, 

 xaxalaimouaqq, t7 t c, aeArjvrjQ). The latter happened, as we have 

 seen (p. 44S), on March 13th in — 41 ; consequently the still full- 

 orbed moon (otlrjvq, p. 414) rose in Rome, on the 14th day of 

 March, about 8 o'clock p.m., and so it could, about midnight of 

 the same day, awaken Calpurnia. In — 43, on the contrary, to 

 which Petavius refers Caesar's assassination, the moon rose about 

 daybreak, and, being crescent-shaped, could not awaken anybody 

 "at midnight" on March 14th. 



