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When you talk about "the Roman Calendar" you're talking about more than one way of keeping time. The first calendar was the Romulan calendar, but it was pretty crappy in that it didn't even have months covering 61 days of winter. The first calendar that makes sense is the calendar of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome.

Important to remember:

To the Romans, odd numbers were lucky, even numbers were unlucky.

There are 29.5 days to each lunar month, so the Romulan calendar alternated between 29 and 30 days for each of the 10 months, but very little was done during the 30 day months because they were considered ill-fortuned.

Numa saw the need to organize the winter months, and to make all the months "lucky" as he could. So, he added 51 days to 304 day Romulan Calendar, making his 355 days (nearly the full length). It went as follows:

Martius - 31 days

Aprilis - 29 days

Maius - 31 Days

Iunius - 29 Days

Quintilis - 31 days

Sextilis - 29 days

September - 29 days

October - 31 days

November - 29 days

December - 31 Days

Ianuarius - 29 days

Februarius - 28 days

Every other year, at the request of the Pontifis Maximus, there was an intercalendal month to account for the missing days. (20 every two years).

The Romans measured their dates by the passing of the moon. The Kalends (Kalendae) represented the New Moon and started each month. The Nones (Nonae) was approximately the date of the first Quarter moon, nine days before the Ides (which approximated the full moon, which occured roughly on the 13th of most months (or the 15th in others). Dates were counted backwards from those. So, for example, the second to last day in September (28th) would read II Kal. Oct. meaning 2 days before the Kalends of October or September 28th.

Julius Caesar put an end to all of that in 45 BC when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar to match the solar year rather than the lunar. His calculations were spot on and he created the month/day set up that we still use today. The only main difference is that in 44BC, the month Quintilis was renamed Iulius, after Julius Caesar (he was born in that month) and in 8BC Sextilis was renamed Augustus (noting the future emperor's rise to power).

The Julian Calendar kept dates the same way as previous, but the dates and when the months occurred were totally different. March was originally the start of the year because it was the start of Spring (like it is for us), however, under the Julian Calendar, January was the first month, not March, so January was Spring. This was corrected with the Gregorian Calendar which aligned Spring and March once again.

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Q: What did the Roman Calendar look like and how did it help shape the calendar today?
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The calendar used most widely today was developed by who?

The calendar used most widely today, the Gregorian calendar, was developed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This calendar replaced the Julian calendar and is now the internationally accepted civil calendar.


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