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Spec source says: ]] The date of Nero's birth is the 15th of December 37, in the Julian Calendar, which is the 13th of December 37 in the proleptic Gregorian Calendar.</li> <!-- This might not be true. I can't find a reference that gives his birthday with an explicit statement about the calendar being used. However, it seems unlikely that it would be given in the Gregorian calendar, so I assume sites use the Julian one. --> [[ Please replace the above source code with the following source code: ]] The date of Nero's birth is reckoned to be 15th of December 37 in the Julian Calendar, which corresponds to the 13th of December 37 in the proleptic Gregorian Calendar.</li> [[ Justification: 1) there is no doubt that 15th of December refers to a *Julian* calendar. Because it is easy to verify that it is a Julian date. a) The Julian calendar was introduced in year 45 AD in the Roman empire were Nero was emperor. b) A historical source says: "Nero was born at Antium nine months after the death of Tiberius, on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January". [0] And according to the Roman dating customs (see for instance Rolf Brahde's explanation[1] page 239), then "eightenth day before Kalends of January" corresponds to "15th of December". THEREFORE: The comment with the speculation of whether it is meant Julian calendar or not, shouldbe deleted. 2) However, whether he was born exactly year 37 BC is not complety undisputed. [2] THEREFORE: It makes sense to use wording such "reckoned to be", to signify that one doesn't take it completely for granted. [0] http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html#6 [1] http://books.google.com/books?id=kHgyQwAACAAJ [2] http://www.jstor.org/pss/4434858
I agree that there's no doubt, but that's still not an explicit statement regarding which calendar the date refers to, so the comment (which by the way is removed in the w3c version now) is still true. As to the date, it's the commonly used date, and that's good enough for our purposes. We're not writing a historical treatise here, it's an example. EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: It's just an example, it could be completely wrong and it still wouldn't really matter.
(In reply to comment #0) > 1) > there is no doubt that 15th of December refers > to a *Julian* calendar. Because it is easy to verify that > it is a Julian date. > a) The Julian calendar was introduced in year 45 AD in the > Roman empire were Nero was emperor. You mean BC. And just to nitpick, it was the Roman Republic at that point, not the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is usually said to begin in 27 BCE, when Octavian declared himself Augustus. > b) A historical source says: "Nero was born at Antium > nine months after the death of Tiberius, on the eighteenth day > before the Kalends of January". [0] And according to the Roman > dating customs (see for instance Rolf Brahde's explanation[1] > page 239), then "eightenth day before Kalends of January" > corresponds to "15th of December". In principle, that would make sense just as well with the Romans' pre-Julian calendar. That was basically the same as the Julian calendar, except some months had a different number of days, and instead of having a leap year every four years, it had an intercalary month that was added at the discretion of the pontifex maximus to keep the calendar roughly in line with the seasons. But the Romans stopped using their old calendar as soon as Julius Caesar instituted the Julian calendar in 45 BCE. They couldn't have used the old calendar after that point even if they wanted to, since it depended on the pontifex maximus deciding on intercalary months, and he didn't. In particular, Julius Caesar *was* the pontifex maximus when he instituted the new calendar, and obviously wasn't going around keeping up the old one. So yeah, it's completely clear that the calendar in question is the Julian calendar. There's really no other possibility. But it doesn't really matter, it's a comment in the source code.
(In reply to comment #2) > You mean BC. No. Year 37 is in our era. ;-) [But for some reason, until just before I filed the bug, I did the same error as you. Either something with the way our brains work, or some history lessons we forgot or may be something in the way Ian moves his bits and bytes.] Btw Nero's reign was AD 54 to AD 68. He persecuted the Christians. Also, according to HTML5: "Dates before the year one can't be represented as a datetime in this version of HTML." (For some reason, Ian has no problems with stating "this version of HTML" in the WHATwg spec either.) ;-D >> on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January". [0] > So yeah, it's completely clear that the calendar in question is the Julian > calendar. There's really no other possibility. But it doesn't really matter, > it's a comment in the source code. Thus I accepted Ian fix. (He also said he removed the comment.)
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > > You mean BC. > > No. Year 37 is in our era. ;-) The Julian calendar was not introduced in the year 45 AD. It was introduced in the year 45 BC. In 45 AD, Julius Caesar had been dead for decades. Nero was born in 37 AD, not BC, contrary to point (2) in comment #0, but I didn't catch that when I wrote comment #2 -- I was pointing out a separate error.
(In reply to comment #4) > (In reply to comment #3) > > (In reply to comment #2) > > > > > You mean BC. > > > > No. Year 37 is in our era. ;-) > > The Julian calendar was not introduced in the year 45 AD. Of course. > It was introduced in > the year 45 BC. In 45 AD, Julius Caesar had been dead for decades. Nero was > born in 37 AD, not BC, contrary to point (2) in comment #0, Ah, bummer. > but I didn't catch > that when I wrote comment #2 -- I was pointing out a separate error. 1-0 to you, in this case. :-)
mass-move component to LC1
*** Bug 28863 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***