[Avodah] 304 Days Per Year

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 05:38:21PM +0000, Jay F. Shachter via Avodah wrote:
> I don't know that this reply belongs on Avodah -- except insofar as
> the Torah requires us not to make things up and then proclaim them
> publicly to be true -- but this is preposterous.  The Romans did not
> aggregate 10 months into a "year" because they had a decimal system.

Take it up with the Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/science/calendar/The-early-Roman-calendar

   The early Roman calendar

   This originated as a local calendar in the city of [92]Rome,
   supposedly drawn up by [93]Romulus some seven or eight centuries before
   the Christian [94]era, or Common Era. The year began in March and
   consisted of 10 months, six of 30 days and four of 31 days, making
   a total of 304 days: it ended in December, to be followed by what
   seems to have been an uncounted [95]winter gap. [96]Numa Pompilius,
   according to tradition the second king of Rome (715?-673? bce), is
   supposed to have added two extra months, [97]January and [98]February,
   to fill the gap and to have increased the total number of days by 50,
   making 354. To obtain sufficient days for his new months, he is then
   said to have deducted one day from the 30-day months, thus having
   56 days to divide between January and February. But since the Romans
   had, or had developed, a superstitious dread of even numbers, January
   was given an extra day; February was still left with an even number
   of days, but as that [99]month was given over to the infernal gods,
   this was considered appropriate. The system allowed the year of 12
   months to have 355 days, an uneven number. ...

Or this page from Prof James Grout (U Chicago) Encylopedia Romana,
which offers dates, details, and primary sources:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/calendar/romancalendar.html
 
Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The purely righteous do not complain about evil,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   but add justice, don't complain about heresy,
Author: Widen Your Tent      but add faith, don't complain about ignorance,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    but add wisdom.     - R AY Kook, Arpelei Tohar