Leap Year, Caesar’s propaganda, and a new calendar
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If you are listening to this on February 27, 2020, guess what? Tomorrow is not the last day of the month! It’s leap year!
Fun fact! Did you know that many people credit the correction of the calendar to Julius Caesar? However, it wasn’t Julius Caesar who corrected the calendar. It was his mathematician and astronomer Sosigenes who converted the 10-month calendar into a 12-month calendar.
But why did he do this? Everybody thinks he did it because he was a brilliant guy who cared about the calendar. But that’s not really the case. Honestly, if Julius Caesar were alive today, he would probably be the most trending man on Instagram. He loved the publicity and dramatic Flair. So here’s how everything went down. In 48 BC, Julius Caesar chased his son-in-law Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompeii, into Alexandria, Egypt. You see, Julius Caesar’s daughter, Julia, sadly had passed away. His son-in-law Pompey took this opportunity to side with the conservative faction of the Roman senate. Well, Julius Caesar was very unhappy that his son was Taking Liberties and was competing with him for the leadership of the Roman State. And so Caesar entered into a Civil War with Pompey in Pharsalus, Greece. Even though Julius Caesar was outnumbered by Pompey’s troops, he won the battle. This forced Pompeii to flee to Alexandria, Egypt, to hide.
Taking this opportunity for publicity and flair, Caesar chased Pompeii into Alexandria with intentions to simply frighten his son-in-law. His intentions weren’t to murder Pompeii. Julius Caesar had plans to frighten him and then forgive him. He wanted to look like a forgiving leader. It was an operation that he often employed that we’ll call “Caesar appreciation,” where he would forgive his adversaries for their wrongdoings and then send them back to their Homeland to continue to rule. Which was kind of cool.
Well, operandi Caesar appreciation didn’t go so well. Caesar did not communicate with his allies in Alexandria, who were Cleopatra and her brother/husband Ptolemy Theo philopater the 13th, who were in charge. They lived in Alexandria as they ruled over Rome, and they pretty much were in charge.
So when Pompey entered Alexandria, Ptolemy took things into his own hands literally and decapitated Pompeii. Ptolemy then had his tutor, Theodotus sail out to Caesar’s ship carrying the head of Pompeii. This infuriated Caesar. Caesar had a reputation for showing mercy to his Rivals. The decapitation of his son-in-law did not look good for Caesar. So intent on Saving Face, Caesar set out to remove Ptolemy from his seat as ruler.
Caesar set the moves on Cleopatra. Which wasn’t really hard, considering she was loose. Don’t get me wrong, she was smart. She spoke over 12 languages, and she had studied mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. She made use of Alexandria’s library and read a lot. But she also knew she was hot. And she used that to her advantage as well! As a result, for my G‑rated audience, Caesar and Cleopatra became boyfriend and girlfriend and held hands a lot. This was no mistake on Cleopatra’s part. She wanted to rule the throne as well. So after she got Caesar to fall in love with her, Caesar decreed Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy as co-rulers of Rhodes to buy time and earn honor in Alexandria.
Well, bad news. Ptolemy found out that his sister/wife was kissing Caesar. Again, this is for my G‑rated audience. Which, honestly, was probably healthier than her kissing her own brother. And so Ptolemy, upset by this, consulted his Chancellor Pothinus and his General Achillas and then set out a plan to kill Caesar. But Caesar found out.
Believe it or not, the way he found out was through his barber. Apparently, the barber knew what was going down. So Caesar went to get a haircut before the big celebration for Cleopatra and Ptolemy as rulers of Rhodes. Well, the barber told him everything. See, it pays to have a hairdresser! They could very well save your life!
And so Caesar decided to place a guard in the hall outside of the feast. Caesar then proceeded to kill Pothinus. But Achillas quickly escaped and ran to alert Ptolemy’s Army. Caesar realized this, and he knew that his army was too small to battle Ptolemy’s Army. So Caesar sent a messenger to call for more Roman troops.
Ptolemy, however, knew what Caesar was going to do. So he blocked Caesar’s Army and cut off communication by sea. Caesar was now at a disadvantage. And so Caesar created disorder by setting fire to his own ships, which then set fire to the docks. This was how the fire spread. It became a blazing Inferno that then caught hold of the Royal Quarters, which held the Mouesion, also known as House of the Muses, also known as the University at Alexandria. Then the fire spread to the Library of Alexandria. So for those of you who think that the library fell after Hypatia’s death in 400 CE. That is not the case. Caesar actually burnt down part of the library 400 years prior.
Ptolemy died when his ship sank! And so once again, even though Caesar had a smaller military, he won the battle. Caesar then left Alexandria with Cleopatra, and she gave birth to his son Caesarion. For the record, Caesar never officially acknowledged this kid as his son. What a jerk.
So, back to the calendar story. When Caesar returned from Egypt in 46 BC as a dictator, there was a 3‑month discrepancy between the seasons and their calendar date! Harvest celebrations were taking part in long before crops would grow. It made no sense. Also, Caesar was annoyed by the priests who were at Liberty to dictate the dates of the calendar and the times as they saw fit. The church was adding holidays to profit the church, of course. And, without notice, the priest had slipped in the intercalary month called Mercedonius. It was a challenge to track the annual cycles, structure the seasons, and navigate the military through the waters using celestial guidance. So, for Caesar, a repaired calendar would serve as a military guide. And so, with the advice of the brilliant astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar created a new calendar. And this was his new propaganda!
Caesar’s mathematicians were able to structure the year in such a way that the year held 365 days with four equivalent seasons. Julius Caesar, who had exceptional marketing abilities, decided to call this calendar the Julian calendar. Imagine that. Who knows, if Julius Caesar existed today, maybe he’d have his own marketing company. It’s really impressive if you think about how he used public relations and marketing to his advantage.
So the new calendar proved very useful, and by the year 400, outstanding mathematicians like Hypatia were doing math to show that there were 365.246666666 days in the year! Considering that she was doing this using base 60 division, it was pretty impressive and really close. Technically, we have approximately 365.242189 days in the year.
However, we round it up to 365.25 days in the year and adjust for that quarter-day to make our calendar system a little bit easier. I’ll explain. If you think about it, we have an extra quarter of a day in our calendar year. However, we don’t use it. We set it aside until we have four quarters, which makes one whole day, and we put it into the calendar every four years. That is why we have a leap day in our calendar every 4 years. February gets one extra. So instead of 28 days in February, every four years, we have 29.
This keeps our calendar from having a seasonal drift. Otherwise, if we didn’t add the extra day every four years, the calendar year would be moving faster than the Earth moves around the Sun. In fact, it would be moving so much quicker that eventually, we would be celebrating New Year’s Eve in the middle of the summer.
So you may be asking, why don’t we just have 366 days in the year instead of 365? The problem with that is again we would have seasonal drift since technically we have approximately 365.25 days in the year. So, with 366 days a year, we’d be adding ¾ of a day every year. If we did that, the seasonal drift would go in the opposite direction, and we would be adding too many days to our calendar. If that happened, we would be celebrating New Year’s Eve in summer.
Now Sosigenes, Julius Caesar’s genius sidekick, and his math team were onto a really good thing. At least they thought. You see, Easter was traditionally celebrated after the ecclesiastical full moon, which was on or around March 21. However, over the hundreds of years since the Julian calendar was implemented, these dates began to drift, and the calendar was off by several days. That’s better than two months, but still, it wasn’t good.
Long story short, several mathematicians stepped forward and said, “Hey man, we need to change the calendar again.” The Catholic pope agreed. And so in October 1582, the Gregorian calendar was rolled out by Pope Gregory XIII. However, not everybody adapted to it. Some countries decided to keep the Julian calendar instead.
But this did not bode well for planning events between countries. As a matter of fact, not every country has adhered to the Gregorian calendar for hundreds of years. In 1752, Great Britain and its colonies finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. In 1918, Russia and Estonia finally adopted the calendar. It was only in 2016 that Saudi Arabia adopted the Gregorian calendar.
So, what is the Gregorian calendar all about? Well, even though we add an extra day every 4 years, our calendar is still off. However, it’s only off by one day every 100 years. And so to fix this, they decided to skip a leap year every 100 years. Unfortunately, an extra day still managed to sneak in. So they added an additional clause saying if the century is a multiple of 400, then you DO have the leap year. As a result, the year 1600 was a leap year, and the year 2000 was a leap year because they are both divisible by 400. However, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years.
So there you have it! Two great marketing experts, Julius Caesar, and Pope Gregory XIII, both managed to save the planet and etch their names into our history for all time. That is, unless we come up with another calendar. If there are any challengers out there, I’d love to see what you have!
But, to me, at the end of the day (pun intended), I think what really matters is that one day. But I’m not talking about February 29. I’m talking about any day. I’m talking about every day. It’s not the leap years that matter. It’s not the years, it’s not the months, it’s not the weeks, it’s the days. What really matters is just one day, today. So, my friends, Seize the Day! Don’t hesitate, don’t pause, be brave, follow your heart, follow your passions, and seize this day for all it is worth. Until next week, Carpe Diem!