Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 565: Spring of the first year, Wang Zhengyue

After visiting the display in the village, Yang Laobaihu told Guo and his party that they had gathered all the people nearby and were ready to show it to everyone.

Although it was said that everyone would compete to select the best soldier, it was obvious that Yang Laobaihu was more partial to his own Zhuangzi. Therefore, we still took advantage of the first-come-first-served opportunity of being close to the water, and found a reason to stop and let Guo Kang take a look first. If someone is picked out early, it counts as a win.

Guo Kang was not too surprised about this incident.

There is competition between various villages. For example, the tax-free privilege in their village was earned through hard work over the years. This is actually very rare, because the Purple Horde Khanate generally only grants this kind of power to individual veterans with outstanding performance. Those that are exempted from taxation together are either those that have just suffered a disaster or are newly established farms that are still under construction. There are not many people in the country who can earn tax exemption for an entire village due to military merit.

Therefore, the review of this kind of privilege is also very strict. There are many competitors every year, but the number of special tax exemptions granted by the court is very scarce. Even if the selection is successful, if the performance is poor later, it may be snatched away by other villages. After all, this condition is too good, and there are too many jealous people.

Their village has a special relationship with the Guo family, so it is relatively better, but even so, some people will inevitably feel that they are not worse than them, so why are they not treated like this. On the way here, Guo Kang heard that the people in Majia Zhuangzi said strange things from time to time, thinking that they were just taking advantage of their ancestors. The young people on both sides fought several times over this. Therefore, Yang Laobaihu specifically mentioned them once. Obviously, the pressure was not small.

Then, they followed Yang Laobaihu and others through the village and headed to the square.

As the festival approaches, the villagers have packed up their houses and prepared various supplies, making the village seem much livelier. Guo Kang discovered that there were many other decorations placed at the door of each house.

"Are they all celebrating Christmas here?" he asked.

However, the nobles believed that he had eroded their power. Because he often distributed the conquered land to his soldiers without authorization, directly bypassing the Council of Elders. As time went by, the senators became more and more dissatisfied with Romulus, but they were afraid of his military strength and did not dare to say anything.

In the end, the solution they gave was to ruin it.

"Yes, we in Henan celebrate festivals according to the Eastern calendar. Christmas always coincides with the Spring Festival." Zhang Baihu told him.

These days, this is considered relatively unpopular knowledge: although for a long time, from a European perspective, Rome was almost synonymous with order, the Romans did not have a long history of civilization, and they also had little culture in their early years.

In the final analysis, the competition here is actually the competition of calendars.

All in all, this calendar is still very rough - of course, Romulus and the early Romans themselves were very rough, and they really couldn't produce many decent cultural achievements.

This way of celebrating the festival is promoted by the Romanian Church. Basically, depending on what day people celebrate Christmas, you will know which church they prefer.

In the Romulus calendar, there were only 10 full months in a year, with a total of 304 days. The dozens of extra days every year are collectively called "winter" and are not included in any month. Everyone is not holding various rituals and official activities that require recording of dates during this period. They are all on vacation. When the whole year is over, when will we start counting the months from the beginning? In this way, there is no need to think about how to match the month and year...

"Oh..." Guo Kang nodded.

When the people returned, Romulus was nowhere to be found. The senators claimed that Romulus had ascended to heaven and became a god. Others later said that they saw Romulus reappear and warned the Romans to study hard and become excellent soldiers so that all countries could not withstand the Roman army.

The ancient Romans had always been terrible at calendaring. It is said that the most traditional calendar was revised by Romulus himself. This calendar seems to be based on the length of the month, but the length of the year is not an integer multiple of the whole month, and the Romans did not know how to solve this problem.

Although nominally, the Romans had been worshiping Romulus according to this statement, the Romans' attitude towards religion and gods was originally more practical and not too taboo. Both Livy and Plutarch directly recorded that it was the senators who took advantage of the chaos to assassinate Romulus and dismember the body and hide it. This statement, from a historical perspective, is more likely.

However, even the ancient Romans did not believe this story.

In the thirty-eighth year of his reign, Romulus came to review the army near the Champ de Mars. A group of senators and citizens were also present. At this time, the sky suddenly became cloudy and a strong wind blew. Everyone was in chaos and ran around. It is said that thick clouds surrounded Romulus, and a whirlwind caught him and carried him to heaven.

Romulus himself was a military dictator. He always maintained a personal army, always followed by 12 axemen, and a group of followers with wooden sticks. They would beat any opponents they saw. However, he always wins in conflicts with other surrounding city-states, so the army likes him very much.

After Romulus disappeared, power did indeed fall into the hands of the nobles. The Senate decided that all senators would take turns to rule the city for ten days each, trying to turn the monarchy into an aristocratic republic. However, this strategy of patting the head is destined to be difficult to maintain. The Senate's incompetent and chaotic rule aroused strong dissatisfaction among the citizens. After a year of this, the senators themselves were torn by their short reign and constant internal strife. In the end, they could only decide to elect another king.

During the reign of Romulus, the plundering of Sabine women occurred. Although the Romans claimed that the matter was finally resolved through mediation, in fact, it was far more than just a woman breaking up the fight. Judging from the results, the Romans were forced to give the Sabines a lot of political power and even accepted the Sabines as senators. When it came time to choose a king, the Sabine Numa Pompilius was also elected as the second king.

Although Romulus is regarded as the founder and has a greater reputation, a series of Roman religious, political, legal and other systems were only finalized during Numa's tenure.

When Numa was first elected, Rome was just a bandit group in the eyes of surrounding city-states, and its image was probably similar to that of the Mongols in the early years. Moreover, during the reign of Romulus, internal conflicts in Rome became more and more intensified, but Romulus himself was probably only good at killing people in battle, and was never able to deal with them well. The reason why I asked him to be the king was because I heard that he had a reputation as a virtuous man, and I hoped to find an educated person to handle it. Under this situation, even Numa himself was hesitant, feeling that the Romans were too violent and could not be controlled at all. Later, everyone requested again and again before he went to take office in Rome.

Numa claimed that his wife was a nymph goddess named Egolia, and under her guidance, he carried out a series of reforms. He determined the establishment of the clergy, standardized sacrificial activities, and prohibited the random production of idols, especially idols with human and animal images. In addition, during his tenure, he worked hard to eliminate the cultural differences between the Romans and the Sabines and to clarify the laws and define the boundaries of public and private property. The most important Temple of Vesta and Janus also appeared at this time.

The 12-month calendar was also established at this time with reference to the achievements of the Greeks. It is said that Egolia herself taught the Romans the cycles of the moon, the differences between years and months, and designated some special sacred dates. Since then, the Romans have learned how to set leaps to align months and years.

Some people think that Egolia was a fiction created by Numa to legitimize his policies. Others think that she was probably a cultured woman from Greece who brought this knowledge to the Romans, who were no different from barbarians at the time. However, it is certain that many of Rome's cultural achievements were indeed influenced by Greece.

After Numa died, he was not cremated according to the custom of the time, but was buried with his books in a mausoleum on the mountain. In the late Roman Republic, farmers accidentally discovered Numa's tomb and found a number of religious and legal books written in Latin, as well as some philosophical works written in Greek.

When the Senate heard about it, they kept all the Latin works and burned the Greek parts. Maybe it’s the “Rome learning from Greece” thing that’s more embarrassing.

Of course, judging from the results, the cultural level of the Romans was still not very good at that time. The Numari calendar lasted nearly seven hundred years, and in the end it was a mess, and the Romans themselves couldn't fix it.

Logically speaking, this kind of calendar should have fixed rules. But the Romans seemed to lack relevant professionals and simply left the important work of setting leaps to the high priests. You can decide at will which year and when to make leap years.

The position of Roman high priest, like the entire social culture, does not have a strong religious atmosphere. Although it is a priesthood in name, many high priests are actually promotion positions for officials. In actual implementation, they often only look at their own factions and political tendencies. For example, if this year's consul is very satisfactory, they will deliberately add a leap month to let him work for a longer period of time; if the consul is not of their own group, then they will Don't think about leaps.

As a result, the calendar fell into complete chaos, making it difficult for later generations of scholars to know the specific time of something from their records. When Caesar wrote the Gallic War, there was even a situation where it was still March or April according to the calendar, but in fact it was already autumn. In this case, the calendar has actually lost its meaning.

Perhaps because he couldn't stand it, Caesar decided to create a new calendar. The Romans themselves did not have this ability, so they hired scholars from Alexandria to formulate a new calendar that was later called the "Julian Calendar" based on the Egyptian solar calendar.

This new calendar is definitely much better than before. However, it also suffered from various problems and was skewed from the beginning.

This reason is also very stupid: when the Greek and Egyptian scholars who formulated the new calendar taught the calendar to the Romans, they told them that the rule was to "set a leap every three years." However, the Roman priests still lacked professional standards and understood that "a leap occurs every three years." In this way, for decades, no one in Rome noticed anything was wrong. It wasn't until Octavian had been in power for more than 20 years that he remembered to take a look, and was surprised to find that it was already so different.

This rough level of maintenance will inevitably cause problems. Moreover, the lifespan of this calendar has even exceeded the Numa Calendar, which was seriously out of date. This classical era calendar was used from 45 BC until the establishment of the Purple Horde Khanate.

For more than a thousand years, no one tried to replace it. The Romans themselves didn't have any extra energy, and other emerging barbarians were not at this level, so they could just make do with it.

Moreover, because of the collapse of Rome, the calendars themselves were in a state of chaos.

The first sentence of "Spring and Autumn" is "Spring of the first year, Wang Zhengyue". Gongyang Zhuan explains why "Wang Zhengyue" should be emphasized, because it praises the unity of the world. Because the first month is the beginning of the year, and when the year begins is different in different dynasties. Only the king who has achieved great unification has the authority to regulate the world's year-end position. This is also the importance of the calendar.

However, Europe has not been "unified" for a long time, so naturally there is no "Wang Zhengyue". Everyone does their own thing, and no one cares about it anyway. In ancient Roman times, the church opposed January 1 as the beginning of the year, because although this date is the simplest, January is actually the month of Janus, so this date is suspected of being pagan. They hope to start the year on Christmas.

Of course, the church itself cannot control local areas. In practice, everyone uses whatever. Some people use Christmas, some people use Easter - and because the calculation is complicated, no one knows when Easter is, and the result can only be double guessing.

In English chronicles, three calculations of the year were in use, including the traditional Roman "tax day" in late September. Later, it became popular to use the "Annunciation Day" when the Virgin was conceived as the beginning of the year. However, the English did not know why. It seemed that due to a miscalculation, the "Annunciation Day" was placed after Christmas, resulting in a huge confusion in the chronological order. The outrageous result that Brother Tian was born before the Virgin was conceived. However, no one among the locals noticed it, and it spread like this...

Some other countries have begun to go back to the past, using the date of the king's accession as the beginning of the year, and also started "the first month of the first year of the king". Throw Brother Tian and the church aside and count the years by the number of years the king has been in power. In fact, until the 21st century that Guo Kang knew, England's official documents still gave priority to the king's chronology.

The calendar was of divine nature in the Central Plains. Like other religious powers, it was firmly controlled by the central government, so much so that there were often bans on stargazing and astrology among the people. The reason is that the calendar is closely related to agriculture.

Farming time is very important for harvest. If there is a difference of ten days between planting days, the harvest may be reduced by more than 20%, and it may also affect the rhythm of the entire crop rotation. Places at higher latitudes are more sensitive.

However, Europe at higher latitudes has been in this state of chaos all year round. Even the current most standard Julian calendar has an error of more than ten days. If you include their unclear date ordering, you don't know how far it can go. Guo Kang actually doesn't know how they farm. Thinking about it, maybe with European agricultural standards, 20% is not much, so there is no need to pay attention to it...

Of course, I am afraid of comparison in everything. The new calendar brought by the Purple Horde Khanate was much more accurate than theirs. Since the ancestor Boyan Timur came to Hebei to farm, they have been studying the local farming seasons and solar terms to determine the farming sequence. It is precisely because of many such "details" that the agricultural output of the Purple Horde Khanate is much higher than that of its neighbors, and the locals have no reason to reject their calendar.

Once the calendar is accepted, the entire legal narrative based on the calendar will naturally be accepted by the farmers.

(End of this chapter)