To avoid the intercalary days at the end of the ordinary year, these were afterwards distributed among the months in various ways. The number of days to each modern month is inherited, with some changes, from the arrangement adopted by a Greek-Asiatic nation. The names of the months are those given by the Romans; their year originally began with March (as indeed did ours, on Lady Day, down to 1751), and the original names were: _Martius_ from Mars. _Aprilis_ from Aphrodite (Venus).[41] _Maius_ from _dü maiores_, the elder gods. _Junius_ from _dü juniores_, the younger gods. Quintilis the 5th month, afterwards Julius. Sextilis the 6th „ „ Augustus. Septembris the 7th „ Octobris the 8th „ Novembris the 9th „ Decembris the 10th „ Januarius from Janus or Dianus, the sun-god. Februarius from februum, the expiation month. Footnote 41: In the Bithynian calendar were a couple of months, _Areios_ and _Aphrodisios_ (once _Artemisios_), the Greek forms corresponding to Martius and Aprilis. The week is of astrological origin. Even in Europe there are still many people who believe that the seven planets of the pre-Copernican system rule, each in its turn, the successive hours of each day; the planet ruling the first hour gives its name to the day, and influences it astrologically. Thus the week is the series of seven days ruled successively in the first hour by one of the seven planets. From the series of planets arranged in the order of their periods—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon—the order of the day-names comes about in the following way: Sunday (_dies Solis_) was so named from the Sun ruling its first hour. The following six hours being ruled by the other planets, the Sun again rules the eighth hour, also the fifteenth and the twenty-second; the twenty-third hour is ruled by the next planet in the series, Venus;[42] the twenty-fourth by Mercury, and the first hour of the next day by the Moon, hence this will be Monday (_dies Lunæ_). The Moon ruling the first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second hours of Monday, the twenty-third hour will be ruled by Saturn (beginning the series again), the twenty-fourth by Jupiter, and the first hour of the next day by Mars; hence this day will be _dies Martis_ or Tuesday, from the planet Tiw = Mars. And so on with the remaining days, the names of the planet ruling the next day being obtained by passing over the name of the two planets ruling the twenty-third and twenty-fourth hours. Thus beginning with the first planet of the series we get: