JULIAN CALENDAR. 63 



commencement of the fifth would correspond with the fifth astro- 

 nomical year. In the month of February, the lustrations, and 

 other piaculums to the infernal deities, ceased on the 23d day, 

 and the worship of the celestial deities commenced on the 24th.. 

 Ceesar chose, therefore, to insert this intercalary day between 

 the 23d and 24th 'days of February. The Romans did not number 

 their days of the month as we do now, i. e. 1st, 2d, 3d, &c., but 

 they called the first day the Calends, from which our word calendar 

 is derived, thus the 1st day of March was called the Calends of 

 March, the 28th day of February was called thepridie Calendas 

 Martias, the day before the calends of March, the 27th was called 

 the third day of the Calends of March, and the 24th was the sextus, 

 or sixth day, of the Calends ef March, and as Ctesar's intercalary 

 day was added just after this day, it was called bissextile, or double 

 sixth day, and the year in which it was added, received, and still 

 bears the name, bissextile. Many years after, when Christianity 

 became the religion of the Roman Empire, Dionysius Exiguus, a 

 French Monk, after much research, came to the conclusion that 

 the 25th day of December, of the 45th year of Ceesar's era, was 

 the time of the nativity, commonly called Christmas, and therefore 

 the 1st of January, of the 46th year of Caesar, was adopted as the 

 1st of the Christian era. As the first year of Caesar was a bissextile, 

 and as every fourth year after the 45th, was a bissextile, conse- 

 quently the fourth year of the Christian era was a bissextile, and 

 as every fourth year is the one in which the intercalary day is 

 added, we can always determine when this year occurs, by simply 

 dividing the year of the Christian era by 4, if there be no remain- 

 der, the year is a bissextile,- or leap year, but if a remainder, then 

 that remainder shows how many years it is from the last bissextile. 

 The name leap year is given, because the civil reckoning, which 

 had fallen behind the astronomical, leaps ahead and overtakes it. 

 The correction introduced into the calendar by Csesar, would 

 have been sufficient to always keep the astronomical and civil 

 reckoning together, if the fraction of a day over 365 had been just 

 6 hours, or | ; instead of this, however, it is but 5h, 48m, 51.6s, 

 and the difference is llm, 8.4s, which, in 4 years, amounts to 

 44m. 33.6s, by which amount, the fifth civil year begins later than 



