Note 3553 — THE JULIAN CALENDAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF CAESAR’S INVASIONS OF BRITAIN

T. Bergk (Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, 13 Supplementband, 1884, p. 618, n. 2) remarks that Caesar himself regarded the 24th, not the 26th, of September as the date of the equinox. His authority is, I suppose, Vegetius, iv, 39, who says that the autumnal equinox occurred VIII Kal. Oct.: but, according to Pliny (Nat. Hist., xviii, 25 [59], §§ 220-1), it fell on the 28th of September, and according to Varro (Rerum rust., i, 28, §§ 1-2), on the 27th. Columella (De re rust., ix, 14) places it about the 24th of September (circa VIII calend. Octobris); and the 24th was, according to Mommsen (Die röm. Chron. bis auf Caesar, 1859, p. 301), the date adopted in the Julian calendar. But that date was fixed by the calculations of Sosigenes: what right, then, has Bergk to assume that Caesar regarded it as the date of the equinox in 54 B.C., nine years before his reform of the calendar took effect?