CHAPTER XIV._Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"

TIME AND THE CALENDAR.

The opinions of thinkers on the nature of time have been very varied.

Some have considered time as an absolute reality, which is exactly

measured by hours, days, and years, and is as known and real as any

other object whose existence is known to us. Others maintain that time

is only a matter of sensation, or that it is an illusion, or a

hallucination of a lively brain.

The definitions given of it by different great writers is as various.

Thus Kant calls it "one of the forms of sensibility." Schelling declares

it is "pure activity with the negation of all being." Leibnitz defines

it "the order of successions" as he defined space to be the order of

co-existences. Newton and Clarke make space and time two attributes of

the Deity.

A study of the astronomical phenomena of the universe, and a

consideration of their teaching, give us authority for saying, that

neither space nor time are realities, but that the only things absolute

are eternity and infinity.

In fact, we give the name of time to the succession of the terrestrial

events measured by the motion of the earth. If the earth were not to

move, we should have no means of measuring, and consequently no idea of

time as we have it now. So long as it was believed that the earth was at

rest, and that the sun and all the stars turned round us, this apparent

motion was then, as the real motion of the earth is now, the method of

generating time. In fact, the Fathers said that at the end of the world

the diurnal motion would cease, and there would be no more time. But let

us examine the fact a little further.

Suppose for an instant that the earth was, as it was formerly believed

to be, an immense flat surface, which was illuminated by a sun which

remained always immovable at the zenith, or by an invariable diffused

light--such an earth being supposed to be alone by itself in the

universe and immovable. Now if there were a man created on that earth,

would there be such a thing as "time" for him? The light which illumines

him is immovable. No moving shadow, no gnomon, no sun-dial would be

possible. No day nor night, no morning nor evening, no year. Nothing

that could be divided into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

In such a case one would have to fall back upon some other terminating

events, which would indicate a lapse of time; such for instance as the

life of a man. This, however, would be no universal measure, for on one

planet the life might be a thousand years, and on another only a

hundred.

Or we may look at it in another way. Suppose the earth were to turn

twice as fast about itself and about the sun, the persons who lived

sixty of such years would only have lived thirty of our present years,

but they would have seen sixty revolutions of the earth, and, rigorously

speaking, would have lived sixty years. If the earth turned ten times as

fast, sixty years would be reduced to ten, but they would still be sixty

of those years. We should live just as long; there would be four

seasons, 365 days, &c., only everything would be more rapid: but it

would be exactly the same thing for us, and the other apparently

celestial motions having a similar diminution, there would be no change

perceived by us.

Again, consider the minute animals that are observable under the

microscope, which live but for five minutes. During that period, they

have time to be born and to grow. From embryos they become adult, marry,

so to speak, and have a numerous progeny, which they develop and send

into the world. Afterwards they die, and all this in a few minutes. The

impressions which, in spite of their minuteness, we are justified in

presuming them to possess, though rapid and fleeting, may be as profound

for them in proportion as ours are to us, and their measure of time

would be very different from ours. All is relative. In absolute value,

a life completed in a hundred years is not longer than one that is

finished in five minutes.

It is the same for space. The earth has a diameter of 8,000 miles, and

we are five or six feet high. Now if, by any process, the earth should

diminish till it became as small as a marble, and if the different

elements of the world underwent a corresponding diminution, our

mountains might become as small as grains of sand, the ocean might be

but a drop, and we ourselves might be smaller than the microscopic

animals adverted to above. But for all that nothing would have changed

for us. We should still be our five or six feet high, and the earth

would remain exactly the same number of our miles.

A value then that can be decreased and diminished at pleasure without

change is not a mathematical absolute value. In this sense then it may

be said that neither time nor space have any real existence.

Or once again. Suppose that instead of our being on the globe, we were

placed in pure space. What time should we find there? No time. We might

remain ten years, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand years, but we should

never arrive at the next year! In fact each planet makes its own time

for its inhabitants, and where there is no planet or anything answering

to it there is no time. Jupiter makes for its inhabitants a year which

is equal to twelve years of ours, and a day of ten of our hours. Saturn

has a year equal to thirty of ours, and days of ten hours and a quarter.

In other solar systems there are two or three suns, so that it is

difficult to imagine what sort of time they can have. All this infinite

diversity of time takes place in eternity, the only thing that is real.

The whole history of the earth and its inhabitants takes place, not in

time, but in eternity. Before the existence of the earth and our solar

system, there was another time, measured by other motions, and having

relation to other beings. When the earth shall exist no longer, there

may be in the place we now occupy, another time again, for other beings.

But they are not realities. A hundred millions of centuries, and a

second, have the same real length in eternity. In the middle of space,

we could not tell the difference. Our finite minds are not capable of

grasping the infinite, and it is well to know that our only idea of time

is relative, having relation to the regular events that befall this

planet in its course, and not a thing which we can in any way compare

with that, which is so alarming to the ideas of some--eternity.

We have then to deal with the particular form of time that our planet

makes for us, for our personal use.

It turns about the sun. An entire circuit forms a period, which we can

use for a measure in our terrestrial affairs. We call it a year, or in

Latin _annus_, signifying a circle, whence our word _annual_.

A second, shorter revolution, turns the earth upon itself, and brings

each meridian directly facing the sun, and then round again to the

opposite side. This period we call a _day_, from the Latin _dies_, which

in Italian becomes _giorne_, whence the French _jour_. In Sanscrit we

have the same word in _dyaus_.

The length of time that it takes for the earth to arrive at the same

position with respect to the stars, which is called a sidereal year,

amounts to 365.2563744 days. But during this time, as we have seen, the

equinox is displaced among the stars. This secular retrogression brings

it each year a little to the east of its former position, so that the

sun arrives there about eleven minutes too soon. By taking this amount

from the sidereal we obtain the tropical year, which has reference to

the seasons and the calendar. Its length is 365.2422166 days, or 365

days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 47.8 seconds.

In what way was the primitive year regulated? was it a solar or a

sidereal year?

There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation

and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the

succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any

day as its commencement. And as soon as this was attempted a difficulty

would arise from there not being an exact number of days in the year. So

that when reckoned as the interval between certain positions of the sun

they would be of different lengths, which would introduce some

difficulty as to the commencement of the year. Be this the case,

however, or not, Mr. Haliburton's researches seem to show that the

earliest form of year was the sidereal one, and that it was regulated by

the Pleiades.

In speaking of that constellation we have noticed that among the

islanders of the southern hemisphere and others there are two years in

one of ours, the first being called the Pleiades above and the second

the Pleiades below; and we have seen how the same new year's day has

been recognised in very many parts of the world and among the ancient

Egyptians and Hindoos. This year would begin in November, and from the

intimate relation of all the primitive calendars that have been

discovered to a particular day, taken as November 17 by the Egyptians,

it would appear probable that for a long time corrections were made both

by the Egyptians and others in order to keep the phenomenon of the

Pleiades just rising at sunset to one particular named day of their

year--showing that the year they used was a sidereal one. This can be

traced back as far as 1355 B.C. among the Egyptians, and to 1306 B.C.

among the Hindoos. There seem to have been in use also shorter periods

of three months, which, like the two-season year, appear to have been,

as they are now among the Japanese, regulated by the different positions

of the Pleiades.

Among the Siamese of the present day, there are both forms of the year

existing, one sidereal, beginning in November, and regulated by the

fore-named constellation; and the other tropical, beginning in April.

Whether, however, the year be reckoned by the stars or by the sun, there

will always be a difficulty in arranging the length of the year, because

in each case there will be about a quarter of a day over.

It seems, too, to have been found more convenient in early times to take

360 days as the length of the year, and to add an intercalary month now

and then, rather than 365 and add a day.

Thus among the earliest Egyptians the year was of 360 days, which were

reckoned in the months, and five days were added each year, between the

commencement of one and the end of the other, and called unlucky days.

It was the belief of the Egyptians that these five days were the

birthdays of their principal gods; Osiris being born on the first,

Anieris (or Apollo) on the second, Typhon on the third, Isis on the

fourth, Nephys (or Aphrodite) on the fifth. These appear to have some

relation with similar unlucky days among the Greeks and Romans, and

other nations.

The 360 days of the Egyptian year were represented at Acantho, near

Memphis, in a symbolical way, there being placed a perforated vessel,

which each day was filled with water by one of a company of 360 priests,

each priest having charge over one day in the year. A similar symbolism

was used at the tomb of Osiris, around which were placed 360 pitchers,

one of which each day was filled with milk.

On the other hand, the 365 days were represented by the tomb of

Osymandyas, at Thebes, being surrounded by a circle of gold which was

one cubit broad and 365 cubits in circumference. On the side were

written the risings and settings of the stars, with the prognostications

derived from them by the Egyptian astrologers. It was destroyed,

however, by Cambyses when the Persians conquered Egypt.

They divided their year according to Herodotus into twelve months, the

names of which have come down to us.

Even with the 365 days, which their method of reckoning would

practically come to, they would still be a quarter of a day each year

short; so that in four years it would amount to a whole day, an error

which would amount to something perceptible even during the life of a

single man, by its bringing the commencement of the civil year out of

harmony with the seasons. In fact the first day of the year would

gradually go through all the seasons, and at the end of 1460 solar years

there would have been completed 1461 civil years, which would bring back

the day to its original position. This period represents a cycle of

years in which approximately the sun and the earth come to the same

relative position again, as regards the earth's rotation on its axis and

revolution round the sun. This cycle was noticed by Firmicius. Another

more accurate cycle of the same kind, noticed by Syncellus, is obtained

by multiplying 1461 by 25, making 36,525 years, which takes into account

the defect which the extra hours over 365 have from six. The Egyptians,

however, did not allow their year to get into so large an error, though

it was in error by their using sidereal time, regulating their year, and

intercalating days, first according to the risings of the Pleiades, and

after according to that of Sirius, the dog-star, which announced to them

the approaching overflowing of the Nile, a phenomenon of such great

value to Egypt that they celebrated it with annual fetes of the greatest

magnificence.

Among the Babylonians, as we are informed by Mr. Sayce, the year was

divided into twelve lunar months and 360 days, an intercalary month

being added whenever a certain star, called the "star of stars," or Icu,

also called Dilgan, by the ancient Accadians, meaning the "messenger of

light," and what is now called Aldebaran, which was just in advance of

the sun when it crossed the vernal equinox, was not parallel with the

moon until the third of Nisan, that is, two days after the equinox. They

also added shorter months of a few days each when this system became

insufficient to keep their calendar correct.

They divided their year into four quarters of three months each; the

spring quarter not commencing with the beginning of the year when the

sun entered the spring equinox, proving that the arrangement of seasons

was subsequent to the settling of the calendar. The names of their

months were given them from the corresponding signs of the zodiac; which

was the same as our own, though the zodiac began with Aries and the year

with Nisan.

They too had cycles, but they arose from a very different cause; not

from errors of reckoning in the civil year or the revolution of the

earth, but from the variations of the weather. Every twelve solar years

they expected to have the same weather repeated. When we connect this

with their observations on the varying brightness of the sun, especially

at the commencement of the year on the first of Nisan, which they record

at one time as "bright yellow" and at another as "spotted," and remember

that modern researches have shown that weather is certainly in some way

dependent on the solar spots, which have a period _now_ of about eleven

years, we cannot help fancying that they were very near to making these

discoveries.

The year of the ancient Persians consisted of 365 days. The extra

quarter of a day was not noticed for 120 years, at the end of which they

intercalated a month--in the first instance, at the end of the first

month, which was thus doubled. At the end of another 120 years they

inserted an intercalary month after the second month, and so on through

all their twelve months. So that after 1440 years the series began

again. This period they called the intercalary cycle.

The calendar among the Greeks was more involved, but more useful. It

was _luni-solar_, that is to say, they regulated it at the same time by

the revolutions of the moon and the motion about the sun, in the

following manner:--

The year commenced with the new moon nearest to the 20th or 21st of

June, the time of the summer solstice; it was composed in general of

twelve months, each of which commenced on the day of the new moon, and

which had alternately twenty-nine and thirty days.

This arrangement, conformable to the lunar year, only gave 354 days to

the civil year, and as this was too short by ten days, twenty-one hours,

this difference, by accumulation, produced nearly eighty-seven days at

the end of eight years, or three months of twenty-nine days each. To

bring the lunar years into accordance with the solstices, it was

necessary to add three intercalary months every eight years.

The phases of the moon being thus brought into comparison with the

rotation of the earth, a cycle was discovered by Meton, now known as the

Metonic cycle, useful also in predicting eclipses, which comprised

nineteen years, during which time 235 lunations will have very nearly

occurred, and the full moons will return to the same dates. In fact, the

year and the lunation are to one another very nearly in the proportion

of 235 to 19. By observing for nineteen years the positions and phases

of the moon, they will be found to return again in the same order at the

same times, and they can therefore be predicted. This lunar cycle was

adopted in the year 433 B.C. to regulate the luni-solar calendar, and it

was engraved in letters of gold on the walls of the temple of Minerva,

from whence comes the name _golden number_, which is given to the number

that marks the place of the given year in this period of nineteen.

Caliphus made a larger and more exact cycle by multiplying by four and

taking away one day. Thus he made of 27,759 days 76 Julian years, during

which there were 940 lunations.

The Roman calendar was even more complicated than the Greek, and not so

good. Romulus is said to have given to his subjects a strange

arrangement that we can no longer understand. More of a warrior than a

philosopher, this founder of Rome made the year to consist of ten

months, some being of twenty days and others of fifty-five. These

unequal lengths were probably regulated by the agricultural works to be

done, and by the prevailing religious ideas. After the conclusion of

these days they began counting again in the same order; so that the year

had only 304 days.

The first of these ten months was called _Mars_ after the name of the

god from whom Romulus pretended to have descended. The name of the

second, Aprilis, was derived from the word _aperire_, to open, because

it was at the time that the earth opened; or it may be, from Aphrodite,

one of the names of Venus, the supposed grandmother of AEneas. The third

month was consecrated to _Maia_, the mother of Mercury. The names of

the six others expressed simply their order--Quintilis, the fifth;

Sextilis, the sixth; September, the seventh; and so on.

Numa added two months to the ten of Romulus; one took the name of

_Januarius_, from _Janus_: the name of the other was derived either from

the sacrifices (_februalia_), by which the faults committed during the

course of the past year were expiated, or from _Februo___, the god of

the dead, to which the last month was consecrated. The year then had 355

days.

These Roman months have become our own, and hence a special interest

attaches to the consideration of their origin, and the explanation of

the manner in which they have been modified and supplemented. Each of

them was divided into unequal parts, by the days which were known as the

calends, nones, and ides. The calends were invariably fixed to the first

day of each month; the nones came on the 5th or 7th, and the ides the

13th or 15th.

The Romans, looking forward, as children do to festive days, to the fete

which came on these particular days, named each day by its distance from

the next that was following. Immediately after the calends of a month,

the dates were referred to the nones, each day being called seven, six,

five, and so on days before the nones; on the morrow of the nones they

counted to the ides; and so the days at the end of the month always bore

the name of the calends of the month following.

To complete the confusion the 2nd day before the fete was called the

3rd, by counting the fete itself as the 1st, and so they added one

throughout to the number that _we_ should now say expressed our distance

from a certain date.

Since there were thus ten days short in each year, it was soon found

necessary to add them on, so a supplementary month was created, which

was called Mercedonius. This month, by another anomaly, was placed

between the 23rd and 24th of February. Thus, after February 23rd, came

1st, 2nd, 3rd of Mercedonius; and then after the dates of this

supplementary month were gone through, the original month was taken up

again, and they went on with the 24th of February.

And finally, to complete the medley, the priests who had the charge of

regulating this complex calendar, acquitted themselves as badly as they

could; by negligence or an arbitrary use of their power they lengthened

or shortened the year without any uniform rule. Often, indeed, they

consulted in this nothing but their own convenience, or the interests of

their friends.

The disorder which this license had introduced into the calendar

proceeded so far that the months had changed from the seasons, those of

winter being advanced to the autumn, those of the autumn to the summer.

The fetes were celebrated in seasons different from those in which they

were instituted, so that of Ceres happened when the wheat was in the

blade, and that of Bacchus when the raisins were green. Julius Caesar,

therefore, determined to establish a solar year according to the known

period of revolution of the sun, that is 365 days and a quarter. He

ordained that each fourth year a day should be intercalated in the place

where the month Mercedonius used to be inserted, _i.e._ between the 23rd

and 24th of February.

The 6th of the calends of March in ordinary years was the 24th of

February; it was called _sexto-kalendas_. When an extra day was put in

every fourth year before the 24th, this was a second 6th day, and was

therefore called _bissexto-kalendas_, whence we get the name bissextile,

applied to leap year.

But it was necessary also to bring back the public fetes to the seasons

they ought to be held in: for this purpose Caesar was obliged to insert

in the current year, 46 B.C. (or 708 A.U.C.), two intercalary months

beside the month Mercedonius. There was, therefore, a year of fifteen

months divided into 445 days, and this was called the year of confusion.

Caesar gave the strictest injunctions to Sosigenes, a celebrated

Alexandrian astronomer whom he brought to Rome for this purpose; and on

the same principles Flavius was ordered to compose a new calendar, in

which all the Roman fetes were entered--following, however, the old

method of reckoning the days from the calends, nones, and ides.

Antonius, after the death of Caesar, changed the name of Quintilis, in

which Julius Caesar was born, into the name _Julius_, whence we derive

our name July. The name of _Augustus_ was given to the month _Sextilis_,

because the Emperor Augustus obtained his greatest victories during that

month.

Tiberius, Nero, and other imperial monsters attempted to give their

names to the other months. But the people had too much independence and

sense of justice to accord them such a flattery.

The remaining months we have as they were named in the days of Numa

Pompilius.

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--THE ROMAN CALENDAR.]

A cubical block of white marble has been found at Pompeii which

illustrates this very well.

Each of the four sides is divided into three columns, and on each column

is the information about the month. Each month is surmounted by the sign

of the zodiac through which the sun is passing. Beneath the name of the

month is inscribed the number of days it contains; the date of the

nones, the number of the hours of the day, and of the night; the place

of the sun, the divinity under whose protection the month is placed, the

agricultural works that are to be done in it, the civil and

ecclesiastical ceremonies that are to be performed. These inscriptions

are to be seen under the month January to the left of the woodcut.

The reform thus introduced by Julius Caesar is commonly known as the

_Julian reform_. The first year in which this calendar was followed was

44 B.C.

The Julian calendar was in use, without any modification, for a great

number of years; nevertheless, the mean value which had been assigned to

the civil year being a little different to that of the tropical, a

noticeable change at length resulted in the dates in which, each year,

the seasons commenced; so that if no remedy had been introduced, the

same season would be displaced little by little each year, so as to

commence successively in different months.

The Council of Nice, which was held in the year 325 of the Christian

era, adopted a fixed rule to determine the time at which Easter falls.

This rule was based on the supposed fact that the spring equinox

happened every year on the 21st of March, as it did at the time of the

meeting of the Council. This would indeed be the case if the mean value

of the civil year of the Julian calendar was exactly equal to the

tropical year. But while the first is 365.25 days, the second is

365.242264 days; so that the tropical year is too small by 11 minutes

and 8 seconds. It follows hence that after the lapse of four Julian

years the vernal equinox, instead of happening exactly at the same time

as it did four years before, will happen 44 minutes 32 seconds too soon;

and will gain as much in each succeeding four years. So that at the end

of a certain number of years, after the year 325, the equinox will

happen on the 20th of March, afterwards on the 19th, and so on. This

continual advance notified by the astronomers, determined Pope Gregory

XIII. to introduce a new reform into the calendar.

It was in the year 1582 that the _Gregorian reform_ was put into

operation. At that epoch the vernal equinox happened on the 11th instead

of the 21st of March. To get rid of this advance of ten days that the

equinox had made and to bring it back to the original date, Pope Gregory

decided that the day after the 4th of October, 1582, should be called

the 15th instead of the 5th. This change only did away with the

inconvenience at the time attaching to the Julian calendar; it was

necessary to make also some modification in the rule which served to

determine the lengths of the civil years, in order to avoid the same

error for the future.

So the Pope determined that in each 400 years there should be only 97

bissextile years, instead of 100, as there used to be in the Julian

calendar. This made three days taken off the 400 years, and in

consequence the mean value of the civil year is reduced to 365.2425

days, which is not far from the true tropical year. The Gregorian year

thus obtained is still too great by .000226 of a day; the date of the

vernal equinox will still then advance in virtue of this excess, but it

is easy to see that the Gregorian reform will suffice for a great number

of centuries.

The method in which it is carried out is as follows:--In the Julian

calendar each year that divided by four when expressed in its usual way,

by A.D., was a leap year, and therefore each year that completed a

century was such, as 1300, 1400 and so on--but in the Gregorian reform,

all these century numbers are to be reckoned common years, unless the

number without the two cyphers divides by four; thus 1,900 will be a

common year and 2,000 a leap year. It is easy to see that this will

leave out three leap years in every 400 years.

The Gregorian calendar was immediately adopted in France and Germany,

and a little later in England. Now it is in operation in all the

Christian countries of Europe, except Russia, where the Julian calendar

is still followed. It follows that Russian dates do not agree with ours.

In 1582, the difference was ten days, and this difference remained the

same till the end of the seventeenth century, when the year 1700 was

bissextile in the Julian, but not in the Gregorian calendar, so the

difference increased to eleven days, and now in the same way is twelve

days.

Next to the year, comes the day as the most natural division of time in

connection with the earth, though it admits of less difference in its

arrangements, as we cannot be mistaken as to its length. It is the

natural standard too of our division of time into shorter intervals such

as hours, minutes, and seconds. By the word _day_ we mean of course the

interval during which the earth makes a complete revolution round

itself, while _daytime_ may be used to express the portion of it during

which our portion of the earth is towards the sun. The Greeks to avoid

ambiguity used the word _nyctemere_, meaning night and day.

No ancient nation is known that did not divide the day into twenty-four

hours, when they divided it at all into such small parts, which seems to

show that such a division was comparatively a late institution, and was

derived from the invention of a single nation. It would necessarily

depend on the possibility of reckoning shorter periods of time than the

natural one of the day. In the earliest ages, and even afterwards, the

position of the sun in the heavens by day, and the position of the

constellations by night, gave approximately the time. Instead of asking

What "o'clock" is it? the Greeks would say, "What star is passing?" The

next method of determining time depended on the uniform motion of water

from a cistern. It was invented by the Egyptians, and was called a

clepsydra, and was in use among the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the

Romans. The more accurate measurement of time by means of clocks was not

introduced till about 140 B.C., when Trimalcion had one in his dining

chamber. The use of them, however, had been so lost that in 760 A.D.

they were considered quite novelties. The clocks, of course, have to be

regulated by the sun, an operation which has been the employment of

astronomers, among other things, for centuries. Each locality had its

own time according to the moment when the sun passed the meridian of the

place, a moment which was determined by observation.

Before the introduction of the hour, the day and night appear to have

been divided into watches. Among the Babylonians the night was reckoned

from what we call 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., and divided into three watches of

four hours each--called the "evening," "middle," and "morning" watch.

These were later superseded by the more accurate hour, or rather "double

hour" or _casbri_, each of which was divided into sixty minutes and

sixty seconds, and the change taking place not earlier than 2,000 B.C.

Whether the Babylonians (or Accadians) were the inventors of the hour it

is difficult to say, though they almost certainly were of other

divisions of time. It is remarkable that in the ancient Jewish

Scriptures we find no mention of any such division until the date at

which the prophecy of Daniel was written, that is, until the Jews had

come in contact with the Babylonians.

Some nations have counted the twenty-four hours consecutively from one

to twenty-four as astronomers do now, but others and the majority have

divided the whole period into two of twelve hours each.

The time of the commencement of the day has varied much with the

different nations.

The Jews, the ancient Athenians, the Chinese, and several other peoples,

more or less of the past, have commenced the day with the setting of the

sun, a custom which perhaps originated with the determination of the

commencement of the year, and therefore of the day, by the observation

of some stars that were seen at sunset, a custom continued in our memory

by the well-known words, "the evening and the morning were the first

day."

The Italians, till recently, counted the hours in a single series,

between two settings of the sun. The only gain in such a method would be

to sailors, that they might know how many hours they had before night

overtook them; the sun always setting at twenty-four o'clock; if the

watch marked nineteen or twenty, it would mean they had five or four

hours to see by--but such a gain would be very small against the

necessity of setting their watches differently every morning, and the

inconvenience of never having fixed hours for meals.

Among the Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, the modern Greeks, and

inhabitants of the Balearic Isles, &c., the day commenced with the

rising of the sun. Nevertheless, among all the astronomical phenomena

that may be submitted to observation, none is so liable to uncertainty

as the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies, owing among other

things to the effects of refraction.

Among the ancient Arabians, followed in this by the author of the

_Almagesta_, and by Ptolemy, the day commenced at noon. Modern

astronomers adopt this usage. The moment of changing the date is then

always marked by a phenomenon easy to observe.

Lastly, that we may see how every variety possible is sure to be chosen

when anything is left to the free choice of men, we know that with the

Egyptians, Hipparchus, the ancient Romans, and all the European nations

at present, the day begins at midnight. Copernicus among the astronomers

of our era followed this usage. We may remark that the commencement of

the astronomical day commences twelve hours _after_ the civil day.

Of the various periods composed of several days, the week of seven days

is the most widely spread--and of considerable antiquity. Yet it is not

the universal method of dividing months. Among the Egyptians the month

was divided into periods of ten days each; and we find no sign of the

seven days--the several days of the whole month having a god assigned to

each. Among the Hindoos no trace has been found by Max Mueller in their

ancient Vedic literature of any such division, but the month is divided

into two according to the moon; the _clear_ half from the new to the

full moon, the _obscure_ half from the full to the new, and a similar

division has been found among the Aztecs. The Chinese divide the month

like the Egyptians. Among the Babylonians two methods of dividing the

month existed, and both of them from the earliest times. The first

method was to separate it into two halves of fifteen days each, and each

of these periods into three shorter ones of five days, making six per

month. The other method is the week of seven days. The days of the week

with them, as they are with many nations now, were named after the sun

and moon and the five planets, and the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th

days of each month--days separated by seven days each omitting the

19th--were termed "days of rest," on which certain works were forbidden

to be done. From this it is plain that we have here all the elements of

our modern week. We find it, as is well known, in the earliest of Hebrew

writings, but without the mark which gives reason for the number seven,

that is the names of the seven heavenly bodies. It would seem most

probable, then, that we must look to the Accadians as the originators of

our modern week, from whom the Hebrews may have--and, if so, at a very

early period--borrowed the idea.

It is known that the week was not employed in the ancient calendars of

the Romans, into which it was afterwards introduced through the medium

of the biblical traditions, and became a legal usage under the first

Christian Emperors. From thence it has been propagated together with

the Julian calendar amongst all the populations that have been subjected

to the Roman power. We find the period of seven days employed in the

astronomical treatises of Hindoo writers, but not before the fifth

century.

Dion Cassius, in the third century, represents the week as universally

spread in his times, and considers it a recent invention which he

attributes to the Egyptians; meaning thereby, doubtless, the astrologers

of the Alexandrian school, at that time very eager to spread the

abstract speculations of Plato and Pythagoras.

If the names of the days of the week were derived from the planets, the

sun and moon, as is easy to see, it is not so clear how they came to

have their present order. The original order in which they were supposed

to be placed in the various heavens that supported them according to

their distance from the earth was thus:--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun,

Venus, Mercury, the Moon. One supposition is that each hour of the day

was sacred to one of these, and that each day was named from the god

that presided over the first hours. Now, as seven goes three times into

twenty-four, and leaves three over, it is plain that if Saturn began the

first hour of Saturday, the next day would begin with the planet three

further on in the series, which would bring us to the Sun for Sunday,

three more would bring us next day to the Moon for Monday, and so to

Mars for Tuesday, to Mercury for Wednesday, to Jupiter for Thursday, to

Venus for Friday, and so round again to Saturn for Saturday.

The same method is illustrated by putting the symbols in order round the

circumference of a circle, and joining them by lines to the one most

opposite, following always in the same order as in the following figure.

We arrive in this way at the order of the days of the week.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.]

All the nations who have adopted the week have not kept to the same

names for them, but have varied them according to taste. Thus Sunday was

changed by the Christian Church to the "Lord's Day," a name it still

partially retains among ourselves, but which is the regular name among

several continental nations, including the corrupted _Dimanche_ of the

French. The four middle days have also been very largely changed, as

they have been among ourselves and most northern nations to commemorate

the names of the great Scandinavian gods Tuesco, Woden, Thor, and Friga.

This change was no doubt due to the old mythology of the Druids being

amalgamated with the new method of collecting the days into weeks.

We give below a general table of the names of the days of the week in

several different languages.

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The cycle which must be completed with the present calendar to bring the

same day of the year to the same day of the week, is twenty-eight years,

since there is one day over every ordinary year, and two every leap

year; which will make an overlapping of days which, except at the

centuries, will go through all the changes in twenty-eight times, which

forms what is called the solar cycle.

There is but one more point that will be interesting about the calendar,

namely, the date from which we reckon our years.

Among the Jews it was from the creation of the world, as recorded in

their sacred books--but no one can determine when that was with

sufficient accuracy to make it represent anything but an agreement of

the present day. Different interpreters do not come within a thousand

years of one another for its supposed date; although some of them have

determined it very accurately to their own satisfaction--one going so

far as to say that creation finished at nine o'clock one Sunday morning!

In other cases the date has been reckoned from national events--as in

the Olympiads, the foundation of Rome, &c. The word we now use, AERA,

points to a particular date from which to reckon, since it is composed

of the initials of the words AB EXORDIO REGNI AUGUSTI "from the

commencement of the reign of Augustus." At the present day the point of

departure, both forwards and backwards, is the year of the birth of

Jesus Christ--a date which is itself controverted, and the use of which

did not exist among the first Christians. They exhibited great

indifference, for many centuries, as to the year in which Jesus Christ

entered the world. It was a monk who lived in obscurity at Rome, about

the year 580, who was a native of so unknown a country that he has been

called a Scythian, and whose name was Denys, surnamed _Exiguus_, or the

Little, who first attempted to discover by chronological calculations

the year of the birth of Jesus Christ.

The era of Denys the Little was not adopted by his contemporaries. Two

centuries afterwards, the Venerable Bede exhorted Christians to make use

of it--and it only came into general use about the year 800.

Among those who adopted the Christian era, some made the year commence

with March, which was the first month of the year of Romulus; others in

January, which commences the year of Numa; others commenced on Christmas

Day; and others on Lady Day, March 25. Another form of nominal year was

that which commenced with Easter Day, in which case, the festival being

a movable one, some years were shorter than others, and in some years

there might be two 2nd, 3rd, &c., of April, if Easter fell in one year

on the 2nd, and next year a few days later.

The 1st of January was made to begin the year in Germany in 1500. An

edict of Charles IX. prescribes the same in France in 1563. But it was

not till 1752 that the change was made in England by Lord Chesterfield's

Act. The year 1751, as the year that had preceded it, began on March

25th, and it should have lasted till the next Lady Day; but according to

the Act, the months of January, February, and part of March were to be

reckoned as part of the year 1752. By this means the unthinking seemed

to have grown old suddenly by three months, and popular clamour was

raised against the promoter of the Bill, and cries raised of "Give us

our three months." Such have been the various changes that our calendar

has undergone to bring it to its present state.

Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens" · 第 14 / 15 章