Happy September 1st as another year races towards the end. I’m not ready for it to be September, but since we’re here, let me share some of my historic knowledge about this month. If you’re familiar with Latin, you might be confused about the name September. The number seven in Latin is septem, and it seems strange for it to be the name of the ninth month instead.
Indeed, according to the original Roman republican calendar, September was the seventh month of the year prior to the Julian reforms. This original calendar was ten months long with the months of Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. Roman accounts traced it back to their legendary founder Romulus. The year started in spring with March. The ten months each had 30 or 31 days.
However, the Earth takes a little over 365 days to revolve around the sun, meaning that the Roman calendar was constantly off on the tracking of the season. The Roman government had to adjust it frequently by adding days for winter in order to have the year start in spring again. However, the task of adjusting the calendar was tied to a political post and due to Roman campaigns, the official in charge of this could be absent from the city for some time. This was the case with Julius Caesar while he was chief pontiff of Rome and meant to announce the new adjustments, but a campaign in Gaul and his civil war against Pompey kept Caesar out of Rome for years. Thus, the calendar was left unadjusted.
When Caesar returned victorious from his wars in 46 BC, he oversaw a major reform to the Roman calendar. His new calendar, known as the Julian calendar, was a solar calendar inspired by the Egyptian calendar. Two additional months of January and February were added to lengthen the entire calendar and to avoid interfering with Rome’s religious ceremonies, the reform distributed the unassigned days among the months, lengthening many of the older months. With the addition of these new months, the Romans shifted the start of their year to January, which transformed September into the ninth month instead of the seventh month. Strangely, this didn’t seem to bother them enough to change it though two months did undergo name changes, but this was to create July and August to honor Julius Caesar and Augustus, not to correct the incorrect numbering in the names.