Reproduction of the Calendar of Anzio (Fasti Antiates Maiores) from 84-55 BC, on display at the Museum of the Roman Theater of Cesaragusta
Some years seem to pass in the blink of an eye, others seem to drag on for much longer. Some, like leap years, can last even a little longer than normal. And then there is the year 46 BC, which lasted 445 days — 80 days longer than we are used to.
If you thought that 2024 would never end, or that the endless year of 2020 locked at home was the longest of your life, what would you say about 46 BC — which lasted no less than 445 dias?
And after all, Why did this year last so long??
The years are otHow long does it take for Earth to make an orbit? around the Sun and returning to the arbitrary point we define as the start of the new year.
Ours calendars are an attempt to divide the year into parts — months, weeks, days — for our own convenience, explains .
It’s very useful to be able to say “meet you on March 3rd at 12:00” instead of “when the mountain shadows stretch up the hill at the bottom, then we’ll have brunch.”
Although we have improved the correspondence between the orbital year and our calendar years, even adding “leap seconds” To keep things truly in sync, previous calendars weren’t as efficient.
Before the introduction of the Julian calendar by Julius Caesarthe Roman year was very different, containing just four months with 31 days — March, July, October and May. The others were shorter, lasting 29 days eachexcept the strange month of February, which had 28 days.
As a result, the calendar quickly became out of sync with the Earth’s passage around the Sun, and by 200 BC the calendar was so out of whack that an almost total eclipse that occurred on what we today call March 14thhi recorded as having occurred on July 11th.
As a consequence, a new addition had to be made every few years. “intercalary month”, called Mercedoniusto neutralize the deviation. It wasn’t a good way to manage a calendar.
Although Mercedonius could be used to realign the calendar with the year, was permeable to political abuse — such as extending the time of mandate of any politician in office.
Later, the emperor Julius Caesar tried to rectify the confusion introducing the Julian Calendar, in 45 BCadding a day or two to the end of all the short months (except the odd February) to make the total number of days in a year more familiar, 365.
But before the new calendar came to (more or less) correct things, there were still a problem to be solved: the year was not yet aligned with the seasons. To rectify this issue, Caesar added several months to the year 46 BC
“So that the correct calculation of the seasons could begin with the next weekend in January, Caesar inserted two other months between November and December, so with these arrangements it was a year of fifteen monthsincluding the intercalary month, which belonged to that year according to previous custom”, the Roman historian Suetonius in Life of Julius Caesar.
Thus, 46 BC became the longest year in history, at 445 days, and is sometimes referred to as a year of confusion — or the “year of confusion“.
And the shortest year ever, what was it? It would have been 1582, the year in which the month of . Due to the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, the tenth month jumped from the 4th to the 15th.
