October why 10th month

This meant that the calendar could be more easily corrected by leap years and that the dates of the equinoxes and solstices —and thus, the date of Easter —once again lined up with their observed dates. Named for the Roman god Janus, protector of gates and doorways. Janus is depicted with two faces, one looking into the past, the other into the future. In ancient Roman times, the gates of the temple of Janus were open in times of war and closed in times of peace.

Named for the Roman god of war, Mars. This was the time of year to resume military campaigns that had been interrupted by winter. March was also a time of many festivals, presumably in preparation for the campaigning season. Named for the Roman goddess Maia, who oversaw the growth of plants.

Maia was considered a nurturer and an earth goddess, which may explain the connection with this springtime month. Named for the Roman goddess Juno, patroness of marriage and the well-being of women. Named to honor Roman dictator Julius Caesar B. In 46 B. In the ancient Roman calendar, October was the name of the eighth month of the year. For the truly curious calendar lovers, check out the origin of day names.

Skip to main content. A couple of centuries later, January and February were added to the calendar to bring the calendar closer to days. Over the centuries, the Roman calendar was replaced with the Julian calendar, and then finally for now the Gregorian calendar. The number of days in each month and the names of the months were tweaked to get to where we are today. Vote count:. No ratings so far!

Be the first to rate this wisdom biscuit. Bite-sized knowledge for the hungrily curious. Related: Why did Rome fall? But the Romans were a notoriously organized bunch, so why would they introduce two new months and then simply ignore the fact that many of their other named months no longer made sense?

Well, the answer could be that naming conventions were a bit of a political quagmire back then — lots of people in power were jostling to rename months to aggrandize their origins. Emperor Caligula, for example, tried to have September changed to "Germanicus" in honor of his father, Sparavigna said.

Emperor Domitian also had a go and tried to turn October into Domitianus. But none of this went down terribly well with the Roman public, who as it turned out, were fairly conservative and didn't take well to change for change's sake. This aversion to change makes sense — after all, many of us today still resist changes to the way we measure things; the metric system is far from universal — and could partly explain why the authorities didn't alter the naming system when they introduced January and February.

The month theory was actually first put about by late-Roman thinkers, who were contemplating their own nonsensical ordering of the months. But others are more skeptical because it all sounds a bit bizarre," Heslin said. Instead, Heslin says there were probably always 12 months in the Roman calendar.