Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
rection of the Roman year, which he made from the Greek kalendar, into 354, with
occasionally 355 days. He added January with twenty-nine days, and February with
twenty-eight, consecrating the latter to the Infernal gods, to whom all sacrifices, he
said, must then be made. January, he declared, must be the first month of the year, and
dethroned March. The priests, however, neglected many rules regarding his months,
and wholly altered his periods of festivals. The greatest irregularities existed till
Julius Cesar took the whole snbject in hand, and by the advice of Sosigenes, a
learned Alexandrian, the solar year of 365 days was determined on, with an intercalation
of oue day in every four years, to adjust the six hours or so extra. This
day was given as a second sixth of the Kalends of March, and the year was
called Bi-sextile or Intercalary; but Cesar, anxious to inconvenienee all as little
as possible, and not to foisake the beginning of the old Lunar year—at once
started the Julian year, not on the day of the winter solstice, but on the day of
new moon following, which chanced to be eight days after the solstice, so that the
first of the Julian year, that is the 1st of January, has always remained the eight day
after the solstiee of Capricorn. Marcus Antonius, it is said, in upholding the great
Emperor’s deerees (for his death occurred the year after his edict), ordered the month
Quintilis to be called Julius, that being the month of his birth. Tradition says that
the next month, Sextilis, was called after the Emperor Augustus.
The year of the Empire soon efffaced all others; the Greeks gave up their Lunar
year, and the Egyptians were obliged to establish their Day of Toth, as the first of their
year, and prevent him wandering climatically through the seasons. The Jewish year
was summarily disposed of, except in regard to religion, which the Empire rarely interfered
with. Christians of course adopted the Imperial year as well as most of its
fetes (as will be seen in my table), nor was it till the year 527 A.C. that they tried to
change the era. One Dionysius, unfaithful to his evident Solar lineage, then started the
era of Christ, which did not however become general till the fifteenth century, and no
wonder; for only in the reign of Justinian, or the sixth century A.C., says Phillips, 1 did
chronology begin to receive any just attention. and then all too late; for when earnest
enquiries came to be made, it was found that no one could tell exactly when Christ
really lived, how long, when he was born, crucified, &c. Some averred, and all were ready
as usual to die for such trifles, that his crucifixion took place in the fifteenth year of
Tiberius, others the sixteenth, and others the nineteenth. Many had stated that
Christ preached publicly for only one year, others two, but Eusebius three and a half;
and most then preferred following this dogmatic though not very scrupulous prelate.
It was only towards the end of the “middle ages” that the Church began to be
conscious of the terrors of history and chronology, and to feel that all who dogmatise
in regions beyond the hazy lines of moral teaching, ignoring facts and dates, stand on
very insecure ground indeed. Teachers who hrad neglected their data for a thousand
years, were not likely to find them then, still less so now; and thus the whole Chris-
1 [The copy I am working from has a footnote citation here but no corresponding note. — T.S.]
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