ed an asylum or place of refuge among the
Greeks and Romans, as well as among the Jews, chiefly to slaves from the
cruelty of their masters, and to insolvent debtors and criminals, where
it was considered impious to touch them; but sometimes they put fire and
combustible materials around the place, that the person might appear to
be forced away, not by men, but by a god: or shut up the temple and
unroofed it, that he might perish in the open air.

CHAPTER XIV.

_The Roman Year._

Romulus divided the year into ten months; the first of which was called
March from Mars, his supposed father; the 2d April, either from the
Greek name of Venus, ({Aphrodita}) or because trees and flowers open
their buds, during that month; the 3d, May, from Maia, the mother of
Mercury; the 4th, June, from the goddess Juno; 5th, July, from Julius
Caesar; 6th, August, from Augustus Caesar; the rest were called from their
number, September, October, November, December.

Numa added two months--January from Janus, and February because the
people were then purified, (_februabatur_) by an expiatory sacrifice
from the sin of the whole year: for this anciently was the last month in
the year.

Numa in imitation of the Greeks divided the year into twelve lunar
months, according to the course of the moon, but as this mode of
division did not correspond with the course of the sun, he ordained that
an intercalary month should be added every other year.

Julius Caesar afterwards abolished this month, and with the assistance of
Sosig{)e}nes, a skilful astronomer of Alexandria, in the year of Rome
707, arranged the year according to the course of the sun, commencing
with the first of January, and assigned to each month the number of days
which they still retain. This is the celebrated Julian or solar year
which has been since maintained without any other alteration than that
of the new style, introduced by pope Gregory, A. D. 1582, and adopted in
England in 1752, when eleven days were dropped between the second and
fourteenth of September.

The months were divided into three parts, _kalends_, _nones_ and _ides_.
They commenced with the _kalends_; the _nones_ occurred on the fifth,
and the _ides_ on the thirteenth, except in March, May, July, and
October, when they fell on the seventh and fifteenth.

In marking the days of the month they went backwards: thus, January
first was the first of the _kalends_ of January--December thirty-first
was _pr