TIL The Egyptians, not Julius Caesar, were the fathers of the modern calendar. The Roman calendar was lunar and had 355 days. Egyptians knew it was 365 days because the Nile would peak on the same day each year. Caesar learned this from his affair with Cleopatra and created the Julian calendar.

TIL The Egyptians, not Julius Caesar, were the fathers of the modern calendar. The Roman calendar...

This title and the articles makes it seem like it was a foreign country to the Romans and Caesar. When Egypt was a client state of the Romans at the time.

Cleopatra herself was Greek. She only learned the native Egyptian language as an adult to ingratiate herself with the natives.

Egypt was part of the Roman empire, but still had its own ruler (Cleopatra)

This is bullshit. The Egyptian calendar had exactly 365 days (instead of 365.25 like Caesar's), and it was in use for several millenia. The calendar drift was perceptible over a lifetime, and the Nile definitely didn't "peak on the same day" every year.

Also that story is way too nice to be true. There was lots of cultural exchange between Egypt, Greece and Rome way before Caesar and Cleopatra.

This article and title suggest the Romans didn't realize a year was about 365.25 days long. This fact has been known to every culture since the invention of counting, and it's essential to the survival of any agrarian people. If you can't figure the length of a year, you can't predict the seasons, you can't sow your crops at the right time, your harvest fails, and you starve to death. The Greco-Roman world had this pretty well figured out for thousands of years before Caesar.

Most calendars of the ancient Western world were lunar, so each month actually lined up with a lunar cycle. Obviously, a lunar cycle of 29.53 days doesn't factor evenly into a solar cycle of 365.24 days. So there was always the problem of what to do with the remainder, the "intercalary days" left over. Often, they would be lumped in at they end of the year, or (as in the pre-Julian Roman calendar) saved up until they could be spliced in as an extra month, sort of a "leap month" every few years.

By Caesar's time, the Roman calendar didn't really have months that lined up neatly with the lunar phases, so what Caesar did was pretty much drop the pretense of "month=moon" and distributed the intercalary days into various months, so that 12 months added up neatly to 365 days. The big innovation of the Julian calendar was to add in a leap day every 4 years, making the calendar year 365.25 years on average, very close to the actual 365.242. Though Caesar's idea may have been inspired by discussions with Egyptian scholars, the Egyptians themselves didn't use a leap year (the Egyptian calendar was strictly 365 days long), despite what the article says.

It wasn't quite an empire yet because it had no emperor. But the Republic was in its death throes at this point. Octavian (Caesar's adopted great-nephew) became Augustus and the first emperor.

What is a client state?

See, that's the difference between emperor & commoner. If I have an affair with a hot leader, all I'm creating are cum stains

The bullshit article makes it sound like the Romans had no idea how long a solar year really was before being told so by the Egyptians.

It's a shame the international fixed calendar didn't take off. I'd like to see a "year day." Also, every month would have a Friday the 13th.

I saw, I conquered, I came.

Unexpected secondary til; cesar and cleopatra roman-ced.

He did invent the Caesar salad though

Technically Victoria was Empress of India, but I do agree with what you say. You don't need an emperor for an empire.

I know Public Schools suck, but they even covered that in HBO's Rome.

Seriously, watch it. Great Murder Porn.

These words are all related, but vassalage is often more a personal relation between two people (vassal and lord) whereas client states are more an official relation between the state and the client ruler.

I watched John Green's take on the subject and he argued that the empire may have existed before there was an emperor. Not really sure on the technical definition of an empire, but it's an idea worth discussing. This is especially true since you can argue of the existence of a British Empire or an American Empire without there ever being an emperor.

Puppet state is when the head of the state is controlled by the master state and acts as a proxy.

Client state is when the state is under the domination of the master state and often pays a tax of sort (money, resources, troops) but the government keeps its independence.

comes from the historic Latin root of the word as a man who puts himself under the protection and influence of a more powerful patron.