“July was called Quintilis — 'the fifth month' — until a Roman dictator got himself assassinated and his friends renamed a month after him.”
For most of Roman history, the fifth month was simply Quintilis, from quintus, 'fifth.' It was the fifth month because the year started in March. Quintilis had 31 days and no mythological patron. It was a number, not a name. Then Gaius Julius Caesar was born on July 12 or 13, around 100 BCE, and the month's anonymity had an expiration date.
Caesar reformed the Roman calendar in 46 BCE with the help of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes. The old calendar had drifted so badly that the seasons no longer matched their months. Caesar added days, fixed the math, and created the Julian calendar — 365 days with a leap year every four years. It was the most accurate calendar the Western world had ever seen.
On March 15, 44 BCE, Caesar was assassinated. In that same year, Mark Antony proposed renaming Quintilis to Iulius in Caesar's honor — his birth month, now his memorial. The Senate agreed. A dictator's vanity (or his friends' grief, depending on your reading) permanently erased a perfectly good number from the calendar.
The Julian calendar remained in use for over 1,600 years until Pope Gregory XIII corrected its slight error in 1582. But the month name stuck. Julius Caesar has been dead for over two thousand years. His month outlasted his empire, his calendar, and every statue erected in his name.
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Today
Americans celebrate their independence on July 4. The French stormed the Bastille on July 14. Both revolutions aimed to overthrow the kind of autocratic power Caesar represented. There is an irony in celebrating freedom in a month named for a dictator, though nobody seems bothered by it.
Caesar's real immortality is not the salad or the surgery. It is the month. Every calendar printed, every date written, every birthday in July carries his name. He wanted to be remembered forever. The calendar was a better bet than the empire.
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