That the Roman year originally began with March is certain[11], not only from the evidence of the names of the months, which after June are reckoned as 5th (Quinctilis), 6th (Sextilis), and so on, but from the nature of the March festivals, as will be shown in treating of that month. In the character of the religious festivals there is a distinct break between February and March, and the operations both of nature and of man take a fresh turn at that point. Between the festivals of December and those of January there is no such break. No doubt January 1, just after the winter solstice, was even at an early time considered in some sense as a beginning; but it is going too far to assume, as some have done, that an ancient religious or priestly year began at that point[12]. It was not on January 1, but on March 1, that the sacred fire in the Aedes Vestae was renewed and fresh laurels fixed up on the Regia, the two buildings which were the central points of the oldest Roman religion[13]. March 1, which in later times at least was considered the birthday of the special protecting deity of the Romans, continued to be the Roman New Year’s Day long after the official beginning of the year had been changed to January 1[14]. It was probably not till 153 B.C., when the consuls began to enter on office on January 1, that this official change took place; and the date was then adopted, not so much for religious reasons as because it was convenient, when the business of administration was increasing, to have the consuls in Rome for some time before they left for their provinces at the opening of the war season in March. No rational account can in my opinion be given of the Roman religious calendar of the Republic unless it be taken as beginning with March; and in this work I have therefore restored the old order of months. With the Julian calendar I am not concerned; though it is unfortunate that all the Roman calendars we possess, including the _Fasti_ of Ovid, date from after the Julian era, and therefore present us with a distorted view of the true course of the old Roman worship. Next after March came Aprilis, the month of opening or unfolding vegetation; then Maius, the month of growing, and Junius, that of ripening and perfecting. After this the names cease to be descriptive of the operations of nature; the six months that follow were called, as four of them still are, only by their positions relative to March, on which the whole system of the year thus turned as on a pivot.