Post #3344155

2026-06-15 19:00 UTC

Julius Caesar himself commissioned an Egyptian astronomer (Sozygenes??) to set the calendar straight. As you rightly say, that was painfully necessary at the time. I think that was in the early 40s, perhaps in 47. Not counting the renaming of a month to August and adding a day to it, this calendar has been tweaked only a little since, in 1582 or thereabout. I claim that if both territory and political unity are taken into account, the European Union is still behind the Roman Empire of the 2nd century, though now it's behind only by a little. Note, for example, that Switzerland, Turkey, and much of the Western Balkans are not in the European Union, so it's "gain some, lose some" regarding just territory, but political unity matters at least to an equal degree. As to the alphabet I don't know what exactly inherited means in your post, and I'd prefer not to reply with multiple variants. (Since it's after dark, my next reply may come in the morning.) @dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @ohir@social.vivaldi.net @spaf@mstdn.social

Replies (1)

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz 2026-06-15 20:06

@vnikolov@ieji.de > Julius Caesar himself commissioned an Egyptian astronomer (Sozygenes??) to set the calendar straight. 46 B.C. Yes, I just can't resist every opportunity to complain about each Pontifex Maximus in the late Republic lengthening and shortening months to extend the office of their political allies and the opposite for their enemies. Although there was: > following Caesar's assassination, the priests mistakenly added the bissextile (bis sextum) leap day every three years due to their inclusive counting. In order to bring the calendar back to its proper place, Augustus was obliged to suspend intercalation for one or two decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar > the European Union is still behind the Roman Empire of the 2nd century The Roman Empire hugged the coastline, is the thing, aside from the entirety of Italy and half of England. As I recall without checking. > As to the alphabet I don't know what exactly inherited means It's quite literal. Yes, we inherited our alphabet from the Romans (with small modifications), but they in turn inherited it (with small changes), not invented it, from the Etruscan alphabet. As *you* of all people certainly know, so I don't know what about my phrasing was confusing. Probably it was just bedtime. For fun: the Etruscan alphabet came from the Cumaean Greek version of the Greek alphabet, which in turn came from the Phoenician alphabet, which came from Egyptian hieroglyphs, which was not even largely alphabetic (ti mixed ideographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic). In ancient times, writing was only invented a very small number of times, and writing systems instead were inherited and adapted by other languages, willy nilly. @ohir@social.vivaldi.net @spaf@mstdn.social

Open ##3344156