<P> The Julian calendar spread beyond the borders of the Roman Empire through its use as the Christian liturgical calendar . When a people or a country was converted to Christianity, they generally also adopted the Christian calendar of the church responsible for conversion . Thus, Christian Nubia and Ethiopia adopted the Alexandrian calendar, while Christian Europe adopted the Julian calendar, in either the Catholic or Orthodox variant . Starting in the 16th century, European settlements in the Americas and elsewhere likewise inherited the Julian calendar of the mother country, until they adopted the Gregorian reform . The last country to adopt the Julian calendar was the Ottoman Empire, which used it for financial purposes for some time under the name Rumi calendar and dropped the "escape years" which tied it to Muslim chronology in 1840 . </P> <P> Although the new calendar was much simpler than the pre-Julian calendar, the pontifices initially added a leap day every three years, instead of every four . There are accounts of this in Solinus, Pliny, Ammianus, Suetonius, and Censorinus . </P> <P> Macrobius gives the following account of the introduction of the Julian calendar: </P> <P> Caesar's regulation of the civil year to accord with his revised measurement was proclaimed publicly by edict, and the arrangement might have continued to stand had not the correction itself of the calendar led the priests to introduce a new error of their own; for they proceeded to insert the intercalary day, which represented the four quarter - days, at the beginning of each fourth year instead of at its end, although the intercalation ought to have been made at the end of each fourth year and before the beginning of the fifth . </P>

What does the author imply about the julian calendar