[129]
It is a custom of the Sicilians, and of
the rest of the Greeks, because they wish their days and months to agree with the
calculations as to the sun and moon, if there be any difference sometimes to take
out a day, or, at most, two days from a month, which they call ἐξαιρέσιμοι. And so also they sometimes make a month longer by a day
or by two days. And when he heard of that, he, this new astronomer, who was thinking
not so much of the heavens as of the heavy plate, 1 he orders
(not a day to be taken out of the month, but) a month and a half to be taken out of
the year; so that the day which, as one may say, ought to have been the thirteenth
of January, became the first of March. And that is done in spite of the
remonstrances and indignation of every one. That was the legitimate day for holding
the comitia. On that day Climachias is declared to have been elected priest.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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