Post #3344156

2026-06-15 20:06 UTC

@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

Replies (1)

@vnikolov@ieji.de 2026-06-16 06:22

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz Right. Thank you for correcting the year I misremembered. The astronomer whose name I misspelled was Sosigenes and he may or may not have been from Alexandria (which in any case was leading in science in those days, of course). Yes, the late Roman Republic was in a lot of trouble, including what you rightly point out. It is not for nothing that Julius Caesar and others after him took power as autocrats. Even besides Italy and England, the Roman Empire was way more than coastal. Its territory included: All of today's France and Belgium (i.e. Transalpine Gaul). All of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal). All of Switzerland and some pieces of today's Germany (on the left bank of the Rhine). All of the Balkan peninsula, and for a while after Traianus, a big part of Wallachia (today, the southern part of Romania). Outside of Europe, all of Asia Minor and the Levant. For a while, Mesopotamia as well. I'd say coastal only in North Africa (except Egypt). Thank you for clarifying your point about the alphabet. I ascribe greater importance to the contribution of the Romans in terms of its spread, but that probably is a topic for another time. I'll just add two things: The ultimate origin of these alphabets, if I recall correctly, is in particular that specific flavor of Egyptian writing that was adapted for administrative purposes (it doesn't look like hieroglyphics at all). The Cyrillic alphabet is a younger "sibling" of the Roman alphabet, directly derived from the Greek alphabet (with quite a few letters added, because the phonetics of Slavic languages is rather different from Greek phonetics). @ohir@social.vivaldi.net @spaf@mstdn.social

Open ##3344157