Potentially stupid question re dates

[tamaranth]

The month 'July' is named after Julius Caesar. (I know this because I read it on a cracker motto. E&OE excepted.)

So what does 31 July 1036 BCE actually mean? Are they talking about the 212th day of a year? (And when does the year start?) Do they mean the 31st day of the 7th month? Or the last day of a month that is generally agreed to correlate to the modern 'July'?

I will not get onto how Bishop Ussher knew it was October when, er, Creation was Created.

(The date's from this website about eclipses in history, if you care.)

Comments

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I've always assumed it was a simple-minded 'rolling back' of the formula used to calculate future event dates.

[nwhyte]

...probably, though it is possible that they use the Julian rather than Gregorian calendar for older dates in the historical era. Really the site itself ought to make clear what they are doing, and I don't see that information anywhere.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

The latter, I suspect. Otherwise things get really complicated when you start to factor in the Julian/Gregorian conversions.

However I suspect you need to ask a real astronomer. Paging purplecthulhu...

Year start

[samuel-lowry.livejournal.com]

Didn't it start somewhere ludicrous like March 25 for the Romans (hence tax year end of April 6, allowing for the Gregorian shift)?

Much better to have it then, once Christmas was out the way, and it's usually better weather. Of course, it clashes with Easter some years.

It isn't exactly meaningful to have a pre-Caesar July so I assume they have 365 and a bit chunks going back from 1BCE. There was no 0BCE or 0CE for that matter. Quasi-July. Pseudo-July.