Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
24.
_Why have the Romans in every moneth three beginnings as it were, to wit, certeine principall and prefixed or preordeined[140] daies, and regard not the same intervall or space of daies betweene?_ IS it because as _Juba_ writeth in his chronicles, that the chiefe magistrates were wont upon the first day of the moneth to call and summon the people; whereupon it tooke the name of _Calends_: and then to denounce unto them that the _Nones_ should be the fift day after; and as for the _Ides_ they held it to be an holy and sacred day? Or for that they measuring and determining the time according to the differences of the moone, they observed in her every moneth three principall changes and diversities: the first, when she is altogether hidden, namely during her conjunction with the sunne; the second when she is somewhat remooved from the beames of the sunne, & beginneth to shew herselfe croissant in the evening toward the West whereas the sunne setteth; the third, when she is at the full: now that occultation and hiding of hers in the first place, they named Calends, for that in their tongue whatsoever is secret & hidden, they say it is [_Clam_] and to hide or keepe close, they expresse by this word [_Celare_;] and the first day of the moones illumination, which wee heere in _Greece_ tearme _Noumenia_, that is to say, the new-moone, they called by a most just name _Nonæ_, for that which is new and yoong, they tearme _Novum_, in manner as wee doe νὲον. As for the _Ides_, they tooke their name of this word εἶδὸς, that signifieth beautie; for that the moone being then at the full, is in the very perfection of her beautie: or haply they derived this denomination of _Dios_, as attributing it to _Jupiter_: but in this we are not to search out exactly the just number of daies, nor upon a small default to slander and condemne this maner of reckoning, seeing that even at this day, when the science of Astrologie is growen to so great an increment, the inequalitie of the motion, and course of the moone surpasseth all experience of Mathematicians, and cannot be reduced to any certeine rule of reason.
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