The Roman calendar counts thusly: the Kalends is the first of any month. The 7th or 9th of the month is the nones. (nines). The 13th or 15th of the month (depends on length) is the Ides.
Pridie means ‘the day before’
So pridie kalendae Octobri is Sept 30. Kalendae Octobri, or Kal Oct, is Oct 1. Oct 2 is viii pr non oct, that is, 8 days before (pr) the nones of October.
Hence Beware the Ides of March means Beware of March 15th.
This is why tax turn in day is April 15—because the US government just didn’t want to put up with the jokes…and they sure didn’t want to go with April 1.
Good thing too; wouldn’t have wanted my parents’ wedding anniversary falling on tax day. Can you imagine those jokes? It’s bad enough that it was 1 April 1955.
I remember reading “Julius Caesar” in Jr. High. We had to do a book with cutout magazine pictures and pick quotes from the text to illustrate the images. Pre-meme.
I remember most, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” I used a (I think) a stone Mayan head covered in moss.
Thank you; I never did keep straight when the Ides of March was. I had some idea (from high school English) that it was a few days near mid-March. Now I know it’s March 15th.
Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous.
One of my favorite lines from the play. At the time, it seemed so insightful. The years have layered the reasons why.
IIRC, it was Macbeth with, “the multitudinous seas incarnadine.” I recall having to do a vocabulary item on “incarnadine,” which seemed like a fine word, though carnelian is less bloodthirsty.
Strange that the Romans had a word for the first day, Kalends, rather than simply, primer dia. (Or is it dies for the singular subject case?)
Was there some significance, why they marked the nones and ides particularly? Maybe a quarter moon? “Ides” — is there a meaning underlying that, such as half-moon? Hmm… but the Latin would’ve been something like quarter lunar, media lunar or demi lunar, for those. Fifteen would’ve been something like quince or quincedecem. Nones is a form of novem or nine. Ides? It looks like “idea.” No help from false cognates, then, I guess.
Hah, and St. Patrick’s Day “managed to be” two days after the Ides of March. ‘Tis a good thing, too.
I’d guess that this would substitute for the idea of a “week”, which doesn’t seem to have been popular—did Rome even have a week before Christianity?
In Hebrew there is no (Biblically-attested) word for any day of the month besides the first, and only the chodesh (from the word for “new”, as in “new moon”—the Jewish months are strictly lunar) had religious significance.
(The holidays of Passover and Sukkot do begin on the 15th of their respective months, though. And to complicate things, those two months, Nissan in springtime and Tishre in autumn, are both considered “first” in the year for different purposes. So Rosh HaShana, the “new year” is at the beginning of Tishre, which is the seventh month.)
And just as kalends led to the term “calendar”, in post-Biblical Hebrew the word chodesh means “month”; the first of the month is now called rosh chodesh (“head” or “first of the chodesh”), which would have confused anyone from an earlier era.
Language is weird.
They held market every 8th day, and Romans count the day you’re in as well as the destination date. Or mile.
Such men are dangerous. They are thinkers. That was something that Caesar would have appreciated, because he himself knew the significance of the appointment as dicator-for-life. Cassius probably also appreciated it, and would have been the driving force behind the plot to kill Caesar. Bear in mind, the plot was not treasonous, Cassius, Brutus, Casca, and the others were true Roman patriots. Caesar was a danger to the Republic because he would not have been answerable for any decisions he made, nor would he have to justify them, and he would have unlimited powers until he died.
I’ve also read that his dying words were not, “Et tu, Brute?”, which is what Shakespeare wrote, but rather in Attic Greek, it would have been “kai sou, teknon?” (without the Greek characters, I chose to spell it phonetically) “And you also, my son?”
If you’re read Heroes in Hell, you’ll know Brutus was allegedly his bastard son, son of Aurelia, who was one of his lovers, when she was married to Brutus sr.
But it’s always the Zelazny line about the “Ides of Octember” that sticks in my head.
(Google attributes this to Zelazny, though for some reason I’d always mis-remembered it as coming from on of Keith Laumer’s Retief stories. Memory is weird.)
Your “ides of Octember” reference recalls to mind one of my favorite “tyops” (typos): “Septmeber.”
Off topic but, this recently added to “books to buy when I can afford it”:http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/03/review-last-ape-standing-chip-walter?utm_source=Feedburner%3A+Frontpage+Partial+RSS+Feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torcom%2FFrontpage_Partial+%28Tor.com+Frontpage+Partial+-+Blog+and+Stories%29
Sorry about the big long URL.
That looks good. Thanks, WOL.
There is an interesting story behind the UK tax day. The US tax day is April 15, but in the UK the tax year runs from April 6 to April 5 the next year.
From early medieval times up to the mid 18th century the first day of the year in England was Lady Day (the feast of the Annunciation), March 25, NOT Jan 1. The days from Jan 1 up to March 24 were considered to be part of the previous year. This may be useful to know when looking at genealogies.
So the day after Dec 31, 1701 was Jan 1, 1701. Then the day after Mar 24, 1701 was Mar 25, 1702. This is called Old Style dating. It applied to the American colonies as well as England.
There was another issue with the English calendar as well. After The Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, England still stuck with the Julian calendar, so they were out of sync with the rest of Europe.
The Calendar Act of 1750 sorted this out. From 1752 the first day of the year moved to Jan 1, in line with other countries. Later that year the calendar jumped 11 days ahead, and switched to the Gregorian system. Sep 2, 1752 was followed by Sep 14, 1752.
This is called New Style dating.
As far as taxes and rents and financial payments were concerned… the year 1751 started on Mar 25 and ran to Dec 31, so it was a very short year. So for financial purposes they kept to the old system. But, because of the Gregorian conversion, if they used Mar 25 as before, the financial year would still be 11 days short. So they moved the end of the financial year to Apr 5, where it remains to this day.
From medieval times Lady Day was the END day of leases and rentals, and the day when payments were due, even though it was technically the first day of the new year, not the last of the previous year.
Anyway, that’s why the UK tax year now ends on Apr 5.
I looked for the explanation of the US tax date and found this:
http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20020415.html
it seems to have nothing at all to do with the English system.
Makes sense, especially when you consider how long the IRS checked returns “manually” — by adding machine. And tomorrow being St’ Paddy’s day — actually saw a news article explaining to people why it’s “St. Paddy’s Day” with “D’s” and “St. Patty’s day” is incorrect because “Patty” is a girl’s name! No mention was made of the fact that “Patrick” in Gaelic is “Pádraig/Pádraic.” O tempora! o mores! o rly?
“The Kalendar Prince” is the second movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scherezade”. But being inspired by the “Thousand and one Nights” of Middle-Eastern bardic tradition, I doubt he was refering to some aspect of Roman time-keeping. Coincidence? Or is there some deeper connection?
Apparently, a kalendar is the name of a kind of shaman or dervish among the tribes of central Asia. The prince was disguised as a kalendar.
Perhaps he took some of his pages along with him, and they ate dates for dinner. Then it could be said that the pages of the kalendar contained many dates. Sorry! 😉
Owwwwwwwwwwwww!
Well, we do get ‘calendar’ from Kalends. But otherwise I have not a clue. A fast google turns up Kalendars as an Eastern dervish sect, and the story involving a prince who disguised himself as a dervish. As for dervishes, they’re a Sufi Muslim ascetic sect, like mendicant friars in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dervish
Which begs the question whether “kalends” derives from roots that mean something associated lengths of time, the sun or moon, etc. (in Etruscan?), or whether it was something the Romans “appropriated”, as they did Greek sculpture, etc., and could have been a middle eastern “import”?
Off topic but very interesting and insightful: http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=59977