Book contents
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
On the Secular Cycle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
Summary
It is well known that, before the Julian reformation of the calendar, the Roman was a lunar year, which was brought, or was meant to be brought, into harmony with the solar by the insertion of an intercalary month. The great Joseph Scaliger, with that piercing eye which converts the declarations of such as know not what they are saying into evidence of truth, discovered the original system of this computation with indisputable certainty. He has shewn that the principle was to intercalate a month, alternately of 22 and 23 days, every other year during periods of twenty-two years, in each of which periods such an intercalary month was inserted ten times, the last biennium being passed over. As five years made a lustre, so five of these periods made a secle of 110 years.
The notion that Italy was in a state of barbarism, and that science was first introduced there through the intercourse between Rome and Greece, must give way, when on the contrary we see this easy and regular computation of time so entirely forgotten in the very age of literary refinement, that Cæsar found the year 67 days in advance of the true time, and was forced to borrow his reformation of the calendar from foreign science.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The History of Rome , pp. 234 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1828