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year was that of the Etruscans who were the most learned and cultivated people of the peninsula. As the civil years of the Latin and other peoples were formed on various principles, and differed in length, the Romans at least, if not the others, deemed it expedient to use, in matters of importance, a common fixed measure of time. On all points relating to science and religion they looked up to the Etruscans; it was, therefore, a matter of course that their year should be the one adopted.
This Etruscan year consisted of 304 days, divided into 38 weeks of eight days each. It is not absolutely certain that it was also divided into months, but all analogy is in favour of such a division. Macrobius and Solinus say, that it contained six months of 31, and four of 30 days, but this does not seem to agree with weeks of eight days; perhaps there were nine months of four weeks and one of two, or more probably eight of four weeks and two of three.[2] This year, which depended on neither the sun nor the moon, was a purely scientific one, founded on astronomical grounds and the accurate measurement of a long portion of time. It served the Etruscans as a correction of their civil lunar year, the one which was in common use, and, from the computations which have been made, it appears that, by means of it, it may be ascertained that the Etruscans had determined the exact length of the tropical or solar year, with a greater degree of accuracy than is to be found in the Julian computation.
Like the Etruscans, the Romans employed for civil purposes a lunar year, which they had probably borrowed also from that people. This year, which, of course, like every year of the kind, must have consisted of twelve months, fell short of the solar year by the space of 11 days and 6 hours, and the mode adopted for bringing them into accordance was to intercalate, as it was termed, a month in every other year, during periods of 22 years, these intercalated months consisting alternately of 22 and 23 days. This month was named Mercedonius. In the last biennium of the period no intercalation took place. As five years made a lustre, so five of these periods made a secle, which thus consisted of 110 years or 22 lustres, and was the largest measure of time among the Romans.[3]
The care of intercalating lay with the pontiffs, and they lengthened and shortened the year at their pleasure, in order to serve or injure the consuls and farmers of the revenue, according as they were hostile or friendly toward them. In consequence of this, Julius Caesar found the year 67 days in advance of the true time, when he undertook to correct it by the aid of foreign science. From his time the civil year of the Romans was a solar, not a lunar one,[4] and the Julian year continued in use till the Gregorian reformation of the Calendar.
We thus see that the civil year of the Romans always consisted of twelve months, and that a year of ten months was in use along with it in the early centuries of the state, which served to correct it, and which was used in matters of importance.[5]
§ 3.
Of the Months and Days of the Roman Year.
When it was believed that the year of 304 days was the original civil year of the Romans, and evidence remained to prove that the commencement of the year had, in former times, been regulated by the vernal equinox, instead of the winter solstice, it seemed to follow, of course, that the original year of Romulus had consisted of but ten months. The inconvenience of this mode of dividing time must have been thought to have appeared very early, since we find the introduction of the lunar year of twelve months ascribed to Numa, who is said to have added two months to the Romulian year, which, it would thus appear, was regarded as having been a year of ten lunar months. This placing of the lunar twelve-month year in the mythic age of Rome, I may observe, tends to confirm the opinion of its having been in use from the origin of the city.
The ancient Israelites had two kinds of year, a religious and a civil one, which commenced at different seasons. Their months also originally, we are told, proceeded numerically, but afterwards got proper names. As the month Abib is mentioned by name in the book of Deuteronomy, I hazard a conjecture, that the civil and religious years had coexisted from the time of Moses, and that the months of the former had had proper names, while those of the latter proceeded numerically. Is there