Yo, Caesar!

[themeletor]

How nerd is it that my friends and I have been greeting eachother with "Happy Ides of March!"

Ju and Rose decided to wear black for the occasion, and I had planned to, but somehow when I woke up today my morning-brain was convinced that I simply had to wear red. For the Ides of March. Because... I don't know.

The same morning-brain thought that "red" meant what I now realize is my pink pinstripe buttonup.

I...should be getting more sleep.

(p.s. british_pickle, my laptop has been seized, and due to that and Yahoo being a b* you'll get your logs -- and my attentions -- on the morrow. If you could let gambling_pirate with-the-ineffective-journal in on this, I'd love you more than I already do. Her e-mail's untrustworthy, yarr.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

~Em

Ok, I'm back. Now time for lesson two, where it gets more confusing.

The Romans did what is called inclusive counting, which basically means they included the number they started on when counting. For instance, March 8th would considered eight days before the ides, not seven, because they would count it 8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15.

To notate how many days there is before the "big dates" in the month, you would use the words ante dies, or more commonly, the abbreviation a.d. You would use this except for the day before, which would be called the pridie, meaning "day before". Also, kalends, nones, and ides have abbreviations; kal., non., and id., respectively.

To use my first example of March 8th, that would be notated by the Romans as:

a.d. VIII ides Mar.

...yes, I abbreviated March too. And the Romans would, of course, have used Roman numerals.

Now it's your turn to guess some dates I'll give. The first one to get them right gets a prize yet to be determined.

a.d. XII kal. Nov.
pridie non. Jun.
a.d. III id. Sept.
a.d. VI non. Oct.

There! Wasn't that fun?... .::inevitably finds out the whole ordeal alienates everyone because they find out what a Latin nerd The Em is::.

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

21st October
4th June
11th September
2nd October

??

Why didn't they ever realise that it's easier just to count upwards?

Of course, I am assuming that we've got as far as the Gregorian calendar & having 12 months & that for working out the above ;-)

PS Being a geek is fun!

[(Anonymous)]

~Em

You win!

...as I said, I haven't determined a prize. We'll talk.

[meletor-et-al.livejournal.com]

She'll have her people call your people.
You'll do lunch.