The Polyhistor

A Yet the equalization of time was never made clear. Therefore, the Greeks subtracted eleven days and a quarter each year and reserved them, multiplied eight times, for the new year, so that the resulting ninety-day number could be split into three months of thirty days each. When restored in the ninth year, these produced four hundred and forty-four days, which they named Embolimaeos inserted/leap months or hyperballontas exceeding/added. Although the Romans initially approved of this, offended by the contemplation of an even number, they lost it in a short time through negligence, after the power of intercalating was transferred to the priests. The priests, often gratifying the accounts of tax collectors, subtracted or added time according to their own whim. Since these things were established in this way, and the method of intercalating sometimes became more excessive, sometimes more diminished, or was altogether ignored, it sometimes happened that months which had been spent in winter would fall now into summer, now into autumn.

B Therefore, C. Caesar Julius Caesar composed this entire inconsistency by correcting the confusion of times, and so that the past error might receive a certain status, he intercalated forty-four days and a quarter at once. By this arrangement, the months were shifted so that they would henceforth hold the established times of their order. Therefore, that year alone had three hundred and forty-four days. Subsequent years had three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter: and then too, a flaw was admitted by the priests. For since it had been ordered that they should intercalate one day every fourth year, and it was proper to observe this once the fourth year was completed before the fifth began, they intercalated at the beginning of the fourth year, not at its end. Thus, over thirty-six years, when only nine days should have sufficed, twelve were intercalated. Augustus detected this, reformed it, and ordered twelve years to pass without intercalation, so that those three days which had been rashly intercalated beyond the nine could be compensated for in this way.