The Ides of March

I enjoyed writing a little calendar-related history for Bissextile Day; so, just for fun, here's some more. This research was quick and dirty, with some heavy Wikipedia-related info, so I could very likely have some of this wrong.

My inspiration? Beware the Ides of March.

The Ides of March is March 15th, with Ides being the Roman term for the middle day of the month. Meaning "half-division" in Latin, you can plainly see what is being divided in half.

Several dictionaries I consulted list Ides as a plural noun, yet when used in a sentence it is not treated as one; ie, "The Ides of March has come." Some dictionaries point out that it can use either a singular or plural verb form, but most usages I found are all singular. Go figure.

Having a special name for the middle day of the month may seem strange, but remember, we're the culture that uses the term "Weekend." BesIdes, looking at the Roman calendar system, you quickly see why it was important.

In modern English, every day of the month is named. The 1st, the 3rd, the 25th. You can imagine our naming scheme to be abbreviated versions of "The X day of the month Y." The numbers are determined by counting up from the start of the month, starting with day one. A simple system, easily adapted to any length of month.

The Roman system had specific names for only three days per month. The first day of a month was the Kalends, which, as you may suspect, is the ancestor of the modern word calendar. Being the first day, its monthly position was invariable. The next two, with shades of the pre-Julian system, came at different points dependent on which month they were in. The Nones was either the fifth or seventh day, and the Ides fell either on the thirteenth or fifteenth.

Why? It all goes back to the origin of months, the Moon. Assuming a month begins with a new moon, this system makes sense: the Kalends is the day of the new moon, the Nones is the day of the half-moon, and the Ides is the day of the full moon.¹ However, as the solar and lunar cycles drift slightly apart, reconciling the two perfectly ends up impossible, and half-measures just get messy.

With just three "named" days to reckon with, the Roman calendar system was, to modern eyes, a total mess. They counted down to the next "named" day. So, the 2nd of March would be the VI ante diem Nones Martius, or "six days before the Nones of March." Wait, you say, six plus two is eight, not seven! True enough, but because it wasn't already confusing enough, the Romans counted inclusively, including the target day.

In another odd twist, this meant that fully half a month was names as "X" days before the following month.

To further confuse, there were three "secondary" days, to the Kalends', Nones', and Ides' "primary" status: the pridie, or "day before." Each of the three primary days had a pridie, leaving the last day of January as the pridie Kalends Februarius, behaving much like the modern "Christmas Eve."

As an outsider looking in, the Romans seem to have really loved their math. Or maybe it's just that they loved to show off their math skills. Regardless, they seem to have gone out of their way to make counting amd keeping track of days, months, years, and numbers in general as difficult as was humanly possible.

[1 - The Romans were clearly an optimisitic people, as they only counted half-full moons, and not half empty-ones. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.] ⇪