57. AD/BC
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2017
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
There’s a small matter I trip over regularly in the Allusionist:
Dates.
Not the fruit.
Specicially, the terms BC and AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini (‘the year of the Lord’ (‘the Lord’ also being Christ)). How did Jesus Christ get to be all up in our system of counting the years?
There’s more about the episode at http://theallusionist.org/abdc.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Salzman, |
| 0:07.2 | feed language after midnight. |
| 0:09.9 | To warm up, here's some word history. |
| 0:12.1 | The origin of the word calendar. |
| 0:14.5 | It's from the Latin word, Calence, |
| 0:16.5 | the name for the first day of the month, the day Dezadue. |
| 0:19.7 | A calendarium was an account book or list, |
| 0:22.0 | so the word also lent it's off later |
| 0:23.9 | to the idea of keeping track of the year. |
| 0:26.3 | Calence derived from the verb Calare |
| 0:28.8 | to call out or announce, |
| 0:30.5 | because priests would declare the presence |
| 0:32.3 | of the new moon that day, |
| 0:33.4 | marking the start of a new month. |
| 0:35.4 | So Calence was the new moon day. |
| 0:37.7 | Idus, the Ides, was the full moon in the middle of the month, |
| 0:41.4 | the 15th or 13th day, |
| 0:43.4 | depending on the length of the month, |
| 0:45.1 | which also dictated the timing of non-Ez, |
| 0:47.7 | which fell either five or seven days |
| 0:50.0 | between Calence and Idus. |
| 0:52.4 | Romans didn't number the days of the month in sequence |
... |
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