And in that calender, February is the last month, which makes it the logical month for adjusting leap years.
EDIT: Because there's a lot of confusion in several replies I thought I'd clarify: February was the second month in Julius Caesar's calendar. Romans in the Republic describe the month as being at some point the last month in the calendar, but we don't have any direct record of that. That's what I mean when I refer to it as a legend: it's a story that later Romans tell about their distant past. It is probably accurate but the sources are too far removed from the actual event to be treated as primary sources.
This is true of Roman history in general: any story that dates back to the kings should be treated as a legend that Romans told about their past. It may have elements of the truth, but shouldn't be taken as firm fact. This particular legend has a lot of evidence going for it, but that doesn't make it inaccurate to refer to it as a legend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalali_calendar
The Iranian calendar (also known as Persian calendar or the Jalaali Calendar)
is a solar calendar currently used in Iran and Afghanistan. It is
observation-based, rather than rule-based, beginning each year on the vernal
equinox as precisely determined by astronomical observations from Tehran.
It's also precisely set to follow seasons. For example, the first day of Fall is actually the first day of "Mehr" (the 7th month). For some reason, the Gregorian calendar has it on Sep. 22.
That’s just a convention. In Russia we use “meteorological” convention, for example, and so each season starts on the 1st of some month (March, June, September, December). It is off from the astronomical convention by ≈20 days and it is off from reality by whatever depending on your location and your feelings on what constitutes seasons.
>For example, the first day of Fall is actually the first day of "Mehr" (the 7th month). For some reason, the Gregorian calendar has it on Sep. 22.
The particular locations of the equinoxes and solstices on the calendar isn't as important as keeping them more or less in the same places as time goes on.
In Persian | In English
mädar | mother
barädar | brother
dokhtar | daughter
pedar | father
bad | bad
...Too bad that the country has received such a negative reputation over the past 4 decades due to its (non-Iranian) regime.
This doesn't really work; the first day of Fall differs from place to place according to the specifics of the local climate.
We also tend to associate summer with days getting longer and winter with days (the period between sunrise and sunset) getting shorter, but the opposite is true: in summer, which is the period from about 21 June to 23 September, days are getting shorter, whereas in winter, between 21 December and 21 March, days are getting longer. Astronomical winter starts on the shortest day, and astronomical summer on the longest day.
I guess we're just eternally confused about calendars. And who can blame us?
This is a convention used only by modern calendars. Astronomers have no opinion on when particular seasons occur. They care about things like when stars rise above or sink below the horizon. But they don't use the change in the sky to determine when winter occurs. People notice that winter occurs around the same time every year, and they associate whatever the sky is doing at that time with the beginning of winter.
As you already note, the solstices are called "midsummer" and "midwinter". That is because they are traditionally identified as the middle of summer and the middle of winter. Why do you believe that they are the beginning instead?
> [summer] the season of the year between spring and autumn when the weather is warmest, lasting from June to September north of the equator and from December to March south of the equator
Wikipedia:
> Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, the earliest sunrise and latest sunset occurs, daylight hours are longest and dark hours are shortest, with day length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition, and culture.
> From an astronomical view, the equinoxes and solstices would be the middle of the respective seasons, but sometimes astronomical summer is defined as starting at the solstice, the time of maximal insolation, often identified with the 21st day of June or December. By solar reckoning, summer instead starts on May Day and the summer solstice is Midsummer.
Only your last sentence presents an alternate definition, the rest confirms it or is close to it. And the astronomical definition is not an uncommon one.
I think you need to reread what I wrote and what you wrote.
Edit: i take it back.
Quoting from your link:
> seasonal lag is not "seasonally symmetric"; that is, the period between the winter solstice and thermal midwinter (coldest time) is not the same as between the summer solstice and thermal midsummer (hottest time).
> In mid-latitude continental climates, [seasonal lag] is approximately 20–25 days in winter and 25–35 days in summer.
> there is no meteorological reason for designating these dates as the first days of their respective seasons.
The equinoxes and the solstices are marked on modern calendars as the beginning of their respective seasons, but I have never heard anyone attempt to justify that. I tend to assume it's the result of the calendar-buying population not having any reason to care what season it currently is.
But even among modern calendar-buying people, I believe they think of big snowdrifts as something that happens in winter, not something that happens in late fall and continues through winter. And the calendar doesn't agree with that.
The same works for the clocks. People in Sweden still use the same 24-hour clock, even though they have vastly different daylight conditions in different seasons.
The Persian calendar is actually our most precise [1] calendars to date, and it owes its precision to tying the calendar to astronomical seasons [2].
[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/date/perfect-calendar.html [2] https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/persian-calendar.html
> Using Equinox as a fixed reference point and a is not any more precise than using meteorological convention wrt thermal seasons
Well, no. What meteorological convention? That's a pretty broad term. We are talking about calendars, not a general weather forecast system, as I was comparing Persian calendar with other calendars.
With Equinox, you get a good indication of weather conditions for a wide geography while having a precise reference point to design a calendar which can be used for other equally important purposes.
P.S. While I was thinking about what you wrote, I wondered how these things were argued and arranged in ancient times and what did they think or say considering what they had to come up with affects a significant portion of the civilized world and trade between nations.
You can't really define seasons with day-precision based on weather or climate.
Are you kidding? Not only are September through December literally named "Month 7" through "Month 10", but the year began in late March as recently as AD 1751. That is not a period where we're suffering from a lack of recorded history.
My main point is still the same: Caesar's calendar started in January and he was following the order that was current in his day. We do not know when the switch from March to January occurred. There are multiple stories about the switch (the supposed dates range from 750 BC to 153 BC), and there are legends of a 10-month calendar that didn't include January and February at all, but there are no extant contemporary records describing the switch.
It is likely that at its conception all the months of the Roman calendar were numbered, but some time later the months January to June were given names corresponding to important religious festivals, which were scheduled during those months.
We have something of a philosophical disagreement; I would argue that the names of the months themselves constitute a contemporary record describing the switch. It doesn't tell us when the switch occurred, but it tells us very clearly that the switch occurred.
It is true that the record might be accidentally or deliberately falsified; perhaps the months were originally named after unrelated concepts and the names got revised into their numerical forms over time. But a formal history suffers from exactly the same problem, and it still gets to be called a "record"; I don't see why we would consider the fact that our ninth month is named "Month Seven" not to be a record of a shift in the beginning of the year [or rather, in the beginning of the sequence of months].
See for example p.187 of https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L333.pdf for a 1st century BC reference to it:
> The Terminalia 'Festival of Terminus,' because this day is set as the last day of the year; for the twelfth month was February, and when the extra month is inserted the last five days are taken off the twelfth month.
That is why March was the first month and February was the last Month.
However, the astronomical rule was not followed later, and due to the inconsistent length of the year the position of the spring equinox had drifted from the 1st of March to around the 25th of March by the time of Julius Caesar.
The present position of the spring equinox around the 20th of March does not correspond to its position at the introduction of the Julian calendar, but to its position around the time of the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325).
The context that I did not include in my original comment and should have is that everything from Rome in the time of the kings is considered to be legend. There are likely things that are rooted in fact, and this story has strong evidence for it, but the number and order of months has not changed in recorded Roman history, we only have indications from later Romans that they believed it changed at some point in the past.
My main point was that Caesar did not have February as the last month, he used the same order as his contemporaries and as we do.
Most of what we know about pre-republican Rome is from oral tradition, not actual records. So if by the time of the Republic February was the second month of the year, it was the second month of the year through all of recorded Roman history.
I really don't doubt the authenticity of the story, I mainly was trying to indicate that we don't know when the change occurred but it certainly happened a long time before Caesar: by his day, the change was an oral tradition whose full story was lost in the very distant past.
Not just "for most". It has negative connotations (of the kind reffered to here) for all people.
"Legend" connotes "didn't take place".