During this
expedition he intended also to dig through the Corinthian
Isthmus,[584] and he had already commissioned Anienus to superintend
the work; and to receive the Tiber[585] immediately below the city in
a deep cut, and giving it a bend towards Circaeum to make it enter the
sea by Tarracina, with the view of giving security and facility to
those who came to Rome for the purpose of trade: besides this he
designed to draw off the water from the marshes about Pomentium and
Setia,[586] and to make them solid ground, which would employ many
thousands of men in the cultivation; and where the sea was nearest to
Rome he designed to place barriers to it by means of moles, and after
clearing away the hidden rocks and dangerous places on the shore of
Ostia[587] to make harbours and naval stations which should give
security to the extensive shipping. And all these things were in
preparation.
LIX. But the arrangement of the Kalendar[588] and the correction of
the irregularity in the reckoning of time were handled by him
skilfully, and being completed were of the most varied utility. For it
was not only in very ancient times that the Romans had the periods of
the moon in confusion with respect to the year, so that the feasts and
festivals gradually changing at last fell out in opposite seasons of
the year, but even with respect to the solar year at that time nobody
kept any reckoning except the priests, who, as they alone knew the
proper time, all of a sudden and when nobody expected it, would insert
the intercalary month named Mercedonius, which King Numa is said to
have been the first to intercalate, thereby devising a remedy, which
was slight and would extend to no great period, for the irregularity
in the recurrence of the times, as I have explained in the Life of
Numa.
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