To get the calendar back on track, Julius declared that the current year(45BCE) would last 445 days
instead of 355. He changed January and February to be the first two months of the year instead of
the last. And months would last either 30 or 31 days, except for February, which would have 29 days
most of the time and 30 days every fourth year.
To honor Julius, the Roman senate took the month of Quintilis and renamed it July. In 8 BCE, the
senate made Sextilis into August to honor the ruler Augustus Caesar. At the same time, they stole a
day from February to make August last as long as July. A good idea since Augustus was still in
charge at the time!
You can still see signs of the old Roman calendar in the months September, October, November, and
December. Sept-, oct-, non-, and deca- are prefixes based on the Latin and Greek words for seven,
eight, nine, ten. Think of the eight-legged octopus, or the decathlon, a track-and-field contest
with 10 events. November and December used to be the ninth and tenth months, but when Julius moved
January and February, the "novem" and "decem" parts no longer made sense.
This revised Julian calendar was almost a match with the length of a solar year-but almost isn't
good enough.