Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

ON THE DIVISIONS AND MEASURES OF TIME.

15

and the year was called bis-sextilis, as having the sixth day twice in
one month.
Soon after the reformation of the calendar Julius Csesar was killed,
and his scheme was so imperfectly understood by the Pontifices, that
instead of making the fourth, they made the third year bissextile.
This error was discovered 37 years after the epoch of the Julian
correction, when 13 intercalations had taken place instead of 10, and
the year began 3 days too late. The error was corrected by the
Emperor Augustus ordaining that the following 12 years should be
of 365 days each, dropping the 3 intercalary years, so that there
should be no leap year till 760 A.T.O., or 7 A.D. From that time the
account has been kept free from error, and the Roman year has been
adopted by almost all Christian nations, with no other variation than
taking the epoch from the birth of Christ instead of from that
of the foundation of the city of Rome.
The name of the month Sextilis was changed to Augustus (our.August) in honour of the Emperor Augustus, and this name it has ever
since retained. The name of the month Quintilis was also changed to
Julius in honour of Julius Ccesar, who had been born in that month.
The names of the Roman months are retained in the English Calendar. The subdivision of their months was different, as they counted
the order of their days backwards instead of forwards, making a
threefold division of the days of each month into Kalends, Nones, and
Ides; our subdivision is into weeks, and reckoned in order forwards.
The Roman Calendar, thus reformed by Julius Caesar, by founding
his corrections on the length of the solar year (called also the Julian
year), was ordered by the edict of the Dictator himself to be adopted
and used throughout the empire; and after its amendment by
Augustus continued to be used in Europe without any variation down
to the year A.D. 1582.
From the time of the Exodus the fourteenth day of the moon has
been reckoned by the Hebrews the full moon. The feast of the
Passover was ordered by Moses to be celebrated at the time of full
moon, and the Hebrews who became Christians would naturally celebrate the festival of Easter, the day of the resurrection of the Messiah,
on the same day as the Hebrew Passover (1 Cor. v. 7; xv. 20), and
there can be no doubt that the Christians of the East celebrated
Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon. It appears that the
Christians of the West, about the middle of the second century of the
Christian era, celebrated Easter on the first Sunday after the fourteenth day of the moon. Both the Eastern and the Western Christians
declared they were guided in their practice by apostolic tradition, and
a schism arose between them in consequence of this difference of time
in observing the festival.
The question which gave rise to this controversy was deemed of
sufficient importance to be brought under the consideration of the
Council of Nice, 325 A.D. After their deliberations, the Council sent
an epistle (still extant) to the Church of Alexandria, declaring their
judgment in the following form:-" We send you the good news concerning the unanimous consent of all in reference to the celebration
of the most solemn feast of Easter, so that all the brethren in the
East, who formerly celebrated the festival at the same time as the
Jews, will in future conform to the Romans and to us, and to
all who have of old observed our manner of celebrating Easter."