Plut. Mor., Roman Questions 19 — Roman Questions

Plut. Mor., Roman Questions 19 — Roman Questions, Plutarch; served verbatim

Question 19. Why do they take the month of January for the beginning of the new year? Solution. Anciently March was reckoned the first, as is plain by many other marks and especially by this, that the fifth month from March was called Quintilis, and the sixth Sextilis, and so forward to the last. December was so called, being reckoned the tenth from March; hence it came to pass that some are of opinion and do affirm that the Romans formerly did not complete the year with twelve months, but with ten only, allotting to some of the months above thirty days. But others give us an account that, as December is the tenth from March, January is the eleventh and February the twelfth; in which month they use purifications, and perform funeral rites for the deceased upon the finishing of the year; but this order of the months being changed, they now make January the first, because on the first day of this month (which day they call the Kalends of January) the first consuls were constituted, the kings being deposed. But some speak with a greater probability, which say that Romulus, being a warlike and martial man and reputing himself the son of Mars, set March in the front of all the months, and named it from Mars; but Numa again, being a peaceable prince and ambitious to bring off the citizens from warlike achievements, set them upon husbandry, gave the pre-eminence to January, and brought Janus into a great reputation, as he was more addicted to civil government and husbandry than to warlike affairs. Now consider whether Numa hath not pitched upon a beginning of the year most suitable to our natural disposition. For there is nothing at all in the whole circumvolution of things naturally first or last, but by law or custom some appoint one beginning of time, some another; but they do best who take this beginning from after the winter solstice, when the sun, ceasing to make any further progress, returns and converts his course again to us. For there is then a kind of tropic in nature itself, which verily increaseth the time of light to us and shortens the time of darkness, and makes the Lord and Ruler of the. whole current of nature to approach nearer to us.

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

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Filed here — the addresses this episode attests; counted by the house’s first pass

Mars — a candidate entry Numa — a life

Roman Questions, Plutarch — translated by Isaac Chauncy (rev. W. W. Goodwin), 1874
Apparatus shelf + pinned Perseus TEI — Plutarch's Morals (the Moralia), ed. William W. Goodwin, five volumes · 'Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph. D.', with an introduction by R. W. Emerson; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874 (five volumes; a minority of the TEI transcriptions were keyed from the same publisher's 1878 reprint)
license: public-domain (US: the Goodwin edition is an 1874 Boston publication of a 1684-1694 translation — title pages verified on all five shelf scans at acquisition; Perseus digital editions CC BY-SA 4.0, attribution recorded per ops/corpus-staging/SOURCES.md pattern)