To
reward him for his accomplishments, the Roman Senate voted to
name a month in his honor, just as the month of Quintilis had
previously been named Julius (July) after the first Caesar.
Because Octavian had been born in Septembris, they offered to
rename that month for him. He chose Sextilis instead, because
several times he had been fortunate during that month. But the
way the story goes, Sextilis in Octavian's time had only 30
days. Octavian's advisors suggested that the month named after
him should not be deficient compared to Julius's month of 31
days. Octavian (Augustus) thus looked around for a month from
which he could remove a day. Romans had religious festivals
that were held on specific days of each month; it would have
been difficult for him to delete any day that remembered a revered
event, so he took a day from Februarius which was already an
odd month and added it to Sextilis, which was then renamed Augustus
(August). So February now had only 28 days in common years but
had 29 in leap years.
If Octavian had made no further changes, July, August and September,
three consecutive months, would then all have had 31 days. In
order to prevent a string of three 31 day months in a row, he
removed one day each from September and November and added one
day to both October and December. As a result, there are now
only two 31-day months in succession in the middle of the year
(July and August) and two at the turn of the year (December
and January). Others claim that lengthening the month of Sextilis
and renaming it Augustus was done not by Octavian but by the
consuls Asinius Gallus and Marcius Censorinus who served as
Ordinary Consuls of the Roman Republic in 8 A.D.
| Julian
Calendar (of Augustus), 8 A.D. onwards |
| Number |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
| Month |
January |
February |
March
|
April |
May |
June |
| Days |
31 |
29
or 28 |
31 |
30 |
31 |
30 |
| Number |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
| Month |
July |
August |
September |
October |
November |
December |
| Days |
31 |
31 |
30 |
31 |
30 |
31 |
As
time progressed, the church did not like the idea of January
1 being the new year, and in 567 A.D. the council of Tours declared
that year start should be reverted back to March. They used
March 25 as the beginning of the year. This practice continued
until Gregorian reform in 1582 A.D.
