Attic calendar
Encyclopedia
The Attic calendar is a hellenic calendar
that was in use in ancient Attica
, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis
. This article focuses on the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the classical period that produced some of the most significant works of ancient Greek literature. Because of the relative wealth of evidence from Athens it is the best understood of all the Hellenic calendar
s. Viewed from the standpoint of the modern Gregorian calendar
, this ancient system has many peculiar features. This is a part of its appeal: as a cultural artifact, it opens a window to the mentality of its users.
Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often of contested interpretation. As it was obvious to ancient Athenians, no contemporary source set out to describe the system as a whole. Further, during the period in question the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it can only be a tentative reconstruction. Note that in this context the terms Athenian and Attic are largely interchangeable.
not only did the months have different names, but the year began in mid-winter. In Athens the year began six months later, just after mid-summer. Furthermore, while Greek months were supposed to begin with the first sighting of the new moon
, this was determined locally and with a degree of variability. In many years the months in the two communities would have more or less coincided, but there is no sign that they tried to keep the days of the month exactly aligned: they would have seen no reason to do so.
The divide between these neighbouring calendars perhaps reflected the traditional hostility between the two communities. Had the Boeotians been speakers of an Ionic dialect, like that spoken in Athens, there would have been overlap in the names of months. An example of this is the Ionian island of Delos
, where the calendar shared four out of twelve month names with Athens, but not in the same places in the year. There, even though the island was under some degree of Athenian control from around 479 to 314 BC, the year started, as with the Boeotians, at midwinter.
) calendar is only loose, and, in some years, might have been out by over a month.
after the summer solstice
. The solstice is when the rising and setting points of the sun on the horizon, which have been creeping north over the past half-year, appear to remain in the same place for a few days before beginning their drift back toward the south. Ideally, the solstice was to occur in the last month of the year. Then, on the day after the evening when the first sliver of the new moon had been seen (or presumed to have been seen), the new year was to begin. Because the relation of these two events, solstice and new moon, is variable, the new year would have moved (in relation to a Gregorian
date) by up to month.
The linking of the sun and the moon meant that the calendar was lunisolar
. Twelve lunar months add up to about 354 days, eleven days or so shorter than the solar year. Under a purely lunar calendar, such as the Islamic
one, the months creep backwards over the years with no relation between the months and the seasons. In Greece with its pronounced seasons this had to be prevented. By tying the start of their year to the solstice, the Athenians allowed the months to relate, with some elasticity, to the seasons.
This still left the problem that twelve lunar months fall eleven days short of the solar year. To make up for this, an extra month had to be inserted ("intercalated
") about every third year, leading to a leap year of about 384 days. So normal years contained 12 lunar cycles and then when it was judged that the months had slid back enough, a year of 13 cycles was used to realign the lunar and solar years. This extra month was achieved by repeating an existing month. That is to say, the same month name was used twice in a row. Handbooks usually refer to the sixth month, Poseideon, as the month that was repeated, but months 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 are all attested as being doubled. (Hannah 2005: 43)
Various cycles were in existence for working out exactly which years needed to take a thirteen month. A nineteen year cycle known as the Metonic cycle
which was developed at Athens by the astronomers Meton and Euctemon
(known to be active in 432 BC), could have been used to pattern the insertion of leap years so as to keep the lunar and solar years aligned with some accuracy. There is, however, no sign that any such system was in fact used at Athens, where the calendar seems to have been administered on an ad hoc basis.
s. These festivals, in a county fair
role, encompassed a much broader range of activities than the word "religious" suggests, and were central to the life of the city.
The Athenian months were named after gods and festivals. In this the calendar differed from the Mesopotamia
n models that lie behind all Greek lunar calendars. In the Sumer
ian and Babylonian
prototypes, for instance, the months were named after the main agricultural activity practised in that month. Many Athenian festivals
did have links with different stages of the agricultural cycle, such as festivals of planting or harvest. This perhaps added to the need to keep lunar
and solar calendar
s roughly aligned, though this was not always achieved. The year of farmers, however, was not the primary focus of the calendar.
Jane Ellen Harrison
, in treating the Attic festivals in Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), noted at the outset that some, though not all of the festivals gave their name to the month in which they were celebrated, and that with the one exception of the Dionysia
, none of the festivals were directly named for Olympians, or indeed, for any divinities (Harrison, p 30).
At Athens month six, Poseideon, took its name directly from the god Poseidon
. More commonly, the god appears in the form of a cult title. (A cult title is the name or aspect under which a god was worshipped at a particular festival.) Examples are Maimakterion, named after Zeus
("the rager") and Metageitnion, after Apollo
as helper of colonists
.
Of all of the months, only the eighth, Anthesterion, was named directly after the major festival celebrated in its month, the Anthesteria
. While the month-naming festivals of Pyanepsia, Thargelia and Skira were relatively important, some of the grandest celebrations in the life of the city are not recognised in the name of the month. Examples are the Great Dionysia
held in Elaphebolion (month 9) and the Panathenaia are only indirectly recognised in Hekatombaion (month 1), named after the hekatombe, the sacrifice of a "hundred oxen" held on the final night of the Panathenaia. More often than not, the festival providing the month name is minor or obsolete. For instance, the second month, Metageitnion, is named after a cult title of the god Apollo, but there is no trace of a festival bearing the name. The same goes for months 5 and 6, Maimakterion and Poseideon.
The calendars of the Ionia
n cities of Asia Minor
(along the western coastline modern Turkey) often share month names with Athens. For instance, at Miletos four of the same month names were in use, namely Thargelion, Metageitnion, Boedromion and Pyanepsion, and the last of these even occupied the same position as month four in both communities. Traditionally, these Ionian cities were founded by colonists from Attica (perhaps around 1050 BC). It may be then that the Athenian month names refer to a festival schedule some hundreds of years out of date.
Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around the beginning of each month. These were often the birthdays of gods, the Greeks thinking of birthday
s as a monthly rather than a yearly recurrence. Every month days 1-4 and 6-8 were all sacred to particular gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days a year:
Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days. This means that every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations, while in the body of each month there was a unique schedule of festival days.
A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted. This practice is not still currently in use.
. The short months of 29 days were known as "hollow" and those with 30 days as "full".
Each month was divided into three phases of ten days associated with the waxing moon, the full moon and the waning moon. The naming of the days was complex. The first day of the month was simply noumenia or new moon, a name used in virtually every Greek calendar. From there the days were numbered up to the 20th day. For the final third of the month the numbering turned around to do a countdown from ten to the last day. Only the middle phase had numbers for the days running higher than 10 and even these were often phrased as "the third over ten" and so forth. In the wings of the month, the numbered days ran 2-10 and then 10-2. Days in these sections were distinguished from each other by adding the participle "rising" and "waning" to the month name. In the centre of the month with its unambiguous numbering there was no need for this, though later the term "of the middling month" was used. The final day of the month was called hena kai nea, "the old and the new". Peculiar to Athens, this name presents the day as bridging the two moons or months. Elsewhere in Greece this day was usually called the thirtieth.
Rather than thinking of the month as a simple duration of thirty days, the three-part numbering scheme focuses on the moon itself. In particular the waning days 10-2 and the waxing days 2-10 frame the crucial moment where the moon vanishes and then reappears.
A date under this scheme might be "the third (day) of Thargelion waning," meaning day 28 of the month Thargelion.
To summarise the days with special names.
This strange juxtapositioning of the two days called the tenth, the earlier and the later, further highlighted the shift into the moon's waning phase.
When a month was to last 29 instead of 30 days (a 'hollow' month), the last day of the month ("the old and new") was pulled back by one day. That is to say, the "2nd day of the waning month" (day 29 in straight sequence) was renamed as month's end.
after 506 BC was to distribute citizens under a new system of ten tribes. This was to try and ensure even participation across the whole community. From this point on ten became a kind of hallmark number for the democracy, as so much citizen activity was done through the ten tribes. (For instance, the 10 generals leading the 10 regiments, the 10 sets of public arbitrators, the 10 treasurers of the Delian league, and so on.)
This decimal ordering extended to the creation of a supplementary calendar with ten months. Each year each tribe contributed 50 members to the council of 500 (boule
) that played an important role in the administration of the city. For one tenth of the year each tribal fifty was on duty, with a third of them in the council chamber at all times as an executive committee for the state. Their period of office was known as a 'prytany' or state month.
In the 5th century this calendar was sun-based using a year of 365 or 366 days and paying no attention at all to the phases of the moon. One likely arrangement is that the ten prytanies were divided between six months of 37 days followed by four months of 36 days. This would be parallel to the arrangement in the 4th century, given below.
From several synchronised datings that survive it is evident that the political and the festival years did not have to begin or end on the same days. The political new year is attested 15 days out either way from the start of the festival year. This system is known from the 420s; whether it had been in place from the beginning of the ten month system is not clear.
However in 407 BC the two calendars were synchronised to start and end on the same days. Hereafter as described in the 4th century Constitution of the Athenians
the civic year was arranged as follows:
In years where an extra month was intercalated
into the festival calendar, the political months were probably lengthened to 39 and 38 days, a method that would have maintained the balance between the tribes. Evidence, however, is lacking.
These political months had no name, but were numbered and given in conjunction with the name of the presiding tribe (which, as determined by lot at the expiry of their predecessors' term, gave no clue as to the time of year). The days too were numbered and here with a straightforward sequence, running from 1 to the total number of days for that month.
One of the main roles of the civic calendar was to position the four assembly
meetings that were to be held each prytany. Where possible, assembly meetings were not held on festival days, including the monthly festival days clustered at the start of each month. As a result, the meetings were bunched slightly toward the end of the month and made to dodge especially the larger festivals.
A date under this calendar might run "the 33rd day in the 3rd prytany, that of the tribe Erechtheis." This is the style used in Athenian state documents (surviving only as inscriptions). Sometimes, however, a dating in terms of the festival calendar is added as well.
calendar
was determined on the ground, month by month and year by year, in the light of immediate concerns, political or military. It was in the control of magistrate
s who were not astronomer
s. How heavy-handed this interference was is controversial. Some scholars believe that if a festival date fell on a day needed for an assembly
meeting, then an extra day could be inserted by simply repeating the same day name twice.
There is clear evidence that this was practised later. In Athens in 271 BC just before the Great Dionysia
four days were inserted between Elaphebolion 9 and 10, putting the calendar on hold. Presumably this was to gain extra rehearsal time for the festival with its performances of tragedy
and comedy
. A similar story comes from the 5th century BC, but at Argos
: the Argives, launching a punitive expedition
in the shadow of the holy month of Karneios when fighting was banned, decided to freeze the calendar to get some extra days of war in. However their allies rejected this rearrangement and went home.
Aristophanes'
Clouds, a comedy from 423 BC, contains a speech where a complaint is brought from the moon: the Athenians have been playing round with the months, "running them up and down" so that human activity and the divine order are completely out of kilter. "When you should be holding sacrifices, instead you are torturing and judging." A situation is known to have applied in the 2nd century BC where the festival calendar was so out of sync with the actual cycles of the moon that the lunisolar
date was sometimes given under two headings, one "according to the god", meaning apparently the moon, and the other "according to the archon
", meaning the festival calendar itself.
By contrast, the Attic calendar had little interest in ordering the sequence of years. As in most Greek cities, the name of one of the yearly magistrates, at Athens known as the eponymous archon
, was used to identify the year in relation to others. That is to say, the sequence of years was matched to a list of names that could be consulted. Instead of citing a numbered year, one could locate a year in time by saying that some event occurred "when X. was archon." This did allow the years to be ordered back in time for a number of generations into the past, but there was no way of dating forward beyond ordinary human reckoning (as in expressions such as "Ten years from now").
There was for instance no use of a century divided into decades. A four year cycle was important which must have helped structure a sense of the passing years: at Athens the festival of the Panathenaia was celebrated on a grander scale every fourth year as the Great Panathenaia. But this was not used as the basis of a dating system.
As both narrowly local and cyclical in focus then, the calendar did not provide a means for dating events in a panhellenically (internationally) comprehensible way. A dating system using the four-yearly Olympiad
s was devised by the Greek Sicilian historian Timaeus
(born c.350 BC) as a tool for the historical research, but it was probably never important on a local level.
s or constellation
s that have been below the horizon
during hours of darkness first appear after sunset. Different star risings were keyed to various farm tasks, such as when to harvest: Hesiod
in the Works and Days urges the farmer to harvest when the Pleiades
rises (an event which elsewhere is set to mark the end of spring). Such a system was part of general Greek tradition, but fitted to local geography and conditions.
The season
s were not viewed by Greeks as dividing the year into four even blocks, but rather spring and autumn were shorter tail sections of the overarching seasons, Summer and Winter. These divisions could be formalised by using star risings or settings in relation to the equinox
es: so for instance, winter is defined in one medical text as the period between the setting of the Pleiades and the spring.
The older tradition as seen in Hesiod
's Works and Days was extended by astronomical research to the creation of star calendars known as parapegmas. These were stone or wooden tablets listing a sequence of astronomical events, each with a peg hole beside it. Lines of bare peg holes were used to count the 'empty days' between what were taken as the significant celestial events. Often set up in town squares (agora
), these tablets put the progression of the year on public display.
This system would have been fundamental to an individual's sense of the advancing year, but it barely intersected with the festival or state calendars. These were more civic in character and required managing to maintain their coherence with the year of the seasons. The seasonal and sidereal
calendar, on the other hand, was immune to interference. So, Thucydides
can date by the rising of the star Arcturus without having to wade into the confusion of disconnected city-state calendars.
Hellenic calendar
The Hellenic calendar—or more properly, the Hellenic calendars, for there was no uniform calendar imposed upon all of Classical Greece—began in most Greek states between Autumn and Winter except the Attic calendar, which began in June...
that was in use in ancient Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
. This article focuses on the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the classical period that produced some of the most significant works of ancient Greek literature. Because of the relative wealth of evidence from Athens it is the best understood of all the Hellenic calendar
Hellenic calendar
The Hellenic calendar—or more properly, the Hellenic calendars, for there was no uniform calendar imposed upon all of Classical Greece—began in most Greek states between Autumn and Winter except the Attic calendar, which began in June...
s. Viewed from the standpoint of the modern Gregorian calendar
Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...
, this ancient system has many peculiar features. This is a part of its appeal: as a cultural artifact, it opens a window to the mentality of its users.
Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often of contested interpretation. As it was obvious to ancient Athenians, no contemporary source set out to describe the system as a whole. Further, during the period in question the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it can only be a tentative reconstruction. Note that in this context the terms Athenian and Attic are largely interchangeable.
Local focus of the system
The Attic calendar was an exclusively local phenomenon, used to regulate the internal affairs of the Athenians and with little relevance to the outside world. For example, just across the border in BoeotiaBoeotia
Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...
not only did the months have different names, but the year began in mid-winter. In Athens the year began six months later, just after mid-summer. Furthermore, while Greek months were supposed to begin with the first sighting of the new moon
New moon
In astronomical terminology, the new moon is the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon, in its monthly orbital motion around Earth, lies between Earth and the Sun, and is therefore in conjunction with the Sun as seen from Earth...
, this was determined locally and with a degree of variability. In many years the months in the two communities would have more or less coincided, but there is no sign that they tried to keep the days of the month exactly aligned: they would have seen no reason to do so.
The divide between these neighbouring calendars perhaps reflected the traditional hostility between the two communities. Had the Boeotians been speakers of an Ionic dialect, like that spoken in Athens, there would have been overlap in the names of months. An example of this is the Ionian island of Delos
Delos
The island of Delos , isolated in the centre of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece...
, where the calendar shared four out of twelve month names with Athens, but not in the same places in the year. There, even though the island was under some degree of Athenian control from around 479 to 314 BC, the year started, as with the Boeotians, at midwinter.
More than one calendar
Athenians lived in fact under a number of simultaneous calendars, used to fix days for different purposes. How much each calendar meant to an individual must have depended on how they lived. They may be set out as follows:- A festival calendar of 12 months based on the cycle of the moon
- A democraticAthenian democracyAthenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model,...
state calendar of 10 arbitrary months - An agricultural calendar of seasonSeasonA season is a division of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology, and hours of daylight.Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of revolution...
s using star risings to fix points in time
List of months
No complete list survives anywhere with all twelve months set out in order, but the following reconstruction is certain. Note also that the correlation suggested here between the Athenian months and those of the modern (GregorianGregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...
) calendar is only loose, and, in some years, might have been out by over a month.
| Summer | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hekatombaion | July/August |
| 2 | Metageitnion | August/September |
| 3 | Boedromion | September/October |
| Autumn | ||
| 4 | Pyanepsion | October/November |
| 5 | Maimakterion | November/December |
| 6 | Poseideon | December/January |
| Winter | ||
| 7 | Gamelion | January/February |
| 8 | Anthesterion | February/March |
| 9 | Elaphebolion | March/April |
| Spring | ||
| 10 | Mounichion | April/May |
| 11 | Thargelion | May/June |
| 12 | Skirophorion | June/July |
Lunisolar calendar
The year was meant to begin with the first sighting of the new moonNew moon
In astronomical terminology, the new moon is the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon, in its monthly orbital motion around Earth, lies between Earth and the Sun, and is therefore in conjunction with the Sun as seen from Earth...
after the summer solstice
Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
. The solstice is when the rising and setting points of the sun on the horizon, which have been creeping north over the past half-year, appear to remain in the same place for a few days before beginning their drift back toward the south. Ideally, the solstice was to occur in the last month of the year. Then, on the day after the evening when the first sliver of the new moon had been seen (or presumed to have been seen), the new year was to begin. Because the relation of these two events, solstice and new moon, is variable, the new year would have moved (in relation to a Gregorian
Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...
date) by up to month.
The linking of the sun and the moon meant that the calendar was lunisolar
Lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. If the solar year is defined as a tropical year then a lunisolar calendar will give an indication of the season; if it is taken as a sidereal year then the calendar will...
. Twelve lunar months add up to about 354 days, eleven days or so shorter than the solar year. Under a purely lunar calendar, such as the Islamic
Islamic calendar
The Hijri calendar , also known as the Muslim calendar or Islamic calendar , is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries , and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic...
one, the months creep backwards over the years with no relation between the months and the seasons. In Greece with its pronounced seasons this had to be prevented. By tying the start of their year to the solstice, the Athenians allowed the months to relate, with some elasticity, to the seasons.
This still left the problem that twelve lunar months fall eleven days short of the solar year. To make up for this, an extra month had to be inserted ("intercalated
Intercalation
Intercalation is the insertion of a leap day, week or month into some calendar years to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. Lunisolar calendars may require intercalations of both days and months.- Solar calendars :...
") about every third year, leading to a leap year of about 384 days. So normal years contained 12 lunar cycles and then when it was judged that the months had slid back enough, a year of 13 cycles was used to realign the lunar and solar years. This extra month was achieved by repeating an existing month. That is to say, the same month name was used twice in a row. Handbooks usually refer to the sixth month, Poseideon, as the month that was repeated, but months 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 are all attested as being doubled. (Hannah 2005: 43)
Various cycles were in existence for working out exactly which years needed to take a thirteen month. A nineteen year cycle known as the Metonic cycle
Metonic cycle
In astronomy and calendar studies, the Metonic cycle or Enneadecaeteris is a period of very close to 19 years which is remarkable for being very nearly a common multiple of the solar year and the synodic month...
which was developed at Athens by the astronomers Meton and Euctemon
Euctemon
Euctemon was an Athenian astronomer. He was a contemporary of Meton and worked closely with this astronomer. Little is known of his work apart from his partnership with Meton and what is mentioned by Ptolemy...
(known to be active in 432 BC), could have been used to pattern the insertion of leap years so as to keep the lunar and solar years aligned with some accuracy. There is, however, no sign that any such system was in fact used at Athens, where the calendar seems to have been administered on an ad hoc basis.
Names of the months
The first function of this calendar was to set the days for the religious festivalReligious festival
A religious festival is a time of special importance marked by adherents to that religion. Religious festivals are commonly celebrated on recurring cycles in a calendar year or lunar calendar...
s. These festivals, in a county fair
County Fair
"County Fair" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Gary Usher for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was originally released as the second track on their 1962 album Surfin' Safari. On November 26th of that year, it was released as the B-side to The Beach Boys' third single, "Ten Little...
role, encompassed a much broader range of activities than the word "religious" suggests, and were central to the life of the city.
The Athenian months were named after gods and festivals. In this the calendar differed from the Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n models that lie behind all Greek lunar calendars. In the Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian and Babylonian
Babylonian calendar
The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar with years consisting of 12 lunar months, each beginning when a new crescent moon was first sighted low on the western horizon at sunset, plus an intercalary month inserted as needed by decree. The calendar is based on a Sumerian precedecessor...
prototypes, for instance, the months were named after the main agricultural activity practised in that month. Many Athenian festivals
Athenian festivals
The festival calendar of city-state of classical Athens involved the staging of a large number of festivals each year. These Athenian festivals included:-Athena:...
did have links with different stages of the agricultural cycle, such as festivals of planting or harvest. This perhaps added to the need to keep lunar
Lunar calendar
A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phase. A common purely lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar. A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to...
and solar calendar
Solar calendar
A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicate the position of the earth on its revolution around the sun .-Tropical solar calendars:...
s roughly aligned, though this was not always achieved. The year of farmers, however, was not the primary focus of the calendar.
Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison was a British classical scholar, linguist and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Greek mythology. She applied 19th century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of Greek religion in ways that have...
, in treating the Attic festivals in Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), noted at the outset that some, though not all of the festivals gave their name to the month in which they were celebrated, and that with the one exception of the Dionysia
Dionysia
The Dionysia[p] was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia...
, none of the festivals were directly named for Olympians, or indeed, for any divinities (Harrison, p 30).
At Athens month six, Poseideon, took its name directly from the god Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
. More commonly, the god appears in the form of a cult title. (A cult title is the name or aspect under which a god was worshipped at a particular festival.) Examples are Maimakterion, named after Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
("the rager") and Metageitnion, after Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
as helper of colonists
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
.
Of all of the months, only the eighth, Anthesterion, was named directly after the major festival celebrated in its month, the Anthesteria
Anthesteria
Anthesteria, one of the four Athenian festivals in honour of Dionysus , was held annually for three days, the eleventh to thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion ; it was preceded by the Lenaia...
. While the month-naming festivals of Pyanepsia, Thargelia and Skira were relatively important, some of the grandest celebrations in the life of the city are not recognised in the name of the month. Examples are the Great Dionysia
Dionysia
The Dionysia[p] was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia...
held in Elaphebolion (month 9) and the Panathenaia are only indirectly recognised in Hekatombaion (month 1), named after the hekatombe, the sacrifice of a "hundred oxen" held on the final night of the Panathenaia. More often than not, the festival providing the month name is minor or obsolete. For instance, the second month, Metageitnion, is named after a cult title of the god Apollo, but there is no trace of a festival bearing the name. The same goes for months 5 and 6, Maimakterion and Poseideon.
The calendars of the Ionia
Ionia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...
n cities of Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
(along the western coastline modern Turkey) often share month names with Athens. For instance, at Miletos four of the same month names were in use, namely Thargelion, Metageitnion, Boedromion and Pyanepsion, and the last of these even occupied the same position as month four in both communities. Traditionally, these Ionian cities were founded by colonists from Attica (perhaps around 1050 BC). It may be then that the Athenian month names refer to a festival schedule some hundreds of years out of date.
Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around the beginning of each month. These were often the birthdays of gods, the Greeks thinking of birthday
Birthday
A birthday is a day or anniversary where a person celebrates his or her date of birth. Birthdays are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with a gift, party or rite of passage. Although the major religions celebrate the birth of their founders , Christmas – which is celebrated widely by...
s as a monthly rather than a yearly recurrence. Every month days 1-4 and 6-8 were all sacred to particular gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days a year:
- Day 1: New MoonNew moonIn astronomical terminology, the new moon is the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon, in its monthly orbital motion around Earth, lies between Earth and the Sun, and is therefore in conjunction with the Sun as seen from Earth...
- Day 2: Agathos DaimonDaemon (mythology)The words dæmon and daimôn are Latinized spellings of the Greek "δαίμων", a reference to the daemons of Ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy...
- Day 3: Athena'sAthenaIn Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
Birthday - Day 4: HeraclesHeraclesHeracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
, HermesHermesHermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
, AphroditeAphroditeAphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
and Eros
- Day 6: Artemis'ArtemisArtemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
Birthday - Day 7: Apollo'sApolloApollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
Birthday - Day 8: PoseidonPoseidonPoseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and TheseusTheseusFor other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
(Mikalson 1975: 24)
Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days. This means that every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations, while in the body of each month there was a unique schedule of festival days.
A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted. This practice is not still currently in use.
Days of the month
The months were either 29 or 30 days in length, loosely in alternation, since the moon orbits the earth in roughly 29.5 days. However, rather than following a set scheme (along the lines of "Thirty days has September..."), the duration of each month was declared just before month's end in an attempt to latch the first of the following month onto the upcoming new moonNew moon
In astronomical terminology, the new moon is the lunar phase that occurs when the Moon, in its monthly orbital motion around Earth, lies between Earth and the Sun, and is therefore in conjunction with the Sun as seen from Earth...
. The short months of 29 days were known as "hollow" and those with 30 days as "full".
Each month was divided into three phases of ten days associated with the waxing moon, the full moon and the waning moon. The naming of the days was complex. The first day of the month was simply noumenia or new moon, a name used in virtually every Greek calendar. From there the days were numbered up to the 20th day. For the final third of the month the numbering turned around to do a countdown from ten to the last day. Only the middle phase had numbers for the days running higher than 10 and even these were often phrased as "the third over ten" and so forth. In the wings of the month, the numbered days ran 2-10 and then 10-2. Days in these sections were distinguished from each other by adding the participle "rising" and "waning" to the month name. In the centre of the month with its unambiguous numbering there was no need for this, though later the term "of the middling month" was used. The final day of the month was called hena kai nea, "the old and the new". Peculiar to Athens, this name presents the day as bridging the two moons or months. Elsewhere in Greece this day was usually called the thirtieth.
Rather than thinking of the month as a simple duration of thirty days, the three-part numbering scheme focuses on the moon itself. In particular the waning days 10-2 and the waxing days 2-10 frame the crucial moment where the moon vanishes and then reappears.
A date under this scheme might be "the third (day) of Thargelion waning," meaning day 28 of the month Thargelion.
| Moon waxing | Moon full | Moon waning |
|---|---|---|
| New Moon | 11th | later 10th |
| 2nd rising | 12th | 9th waning |
| 3rd rising | 13th | 8th waning |
| 4th rising | 14th | 7th waning |
| 5th rising | 15th | 6th waning |
| 6th rising | 16th | 5th waning |
| 7th rising | 17th | 4th waning |
| 8th rising | 18th | 3rd waning |
| 9th rising | 19th | 2nd waning |
| 10th rising | earlier 10th | Old and New |
To summarise the days with special names.
- The first day: noumenia, or new moon.
- The last day: hena kai nea, the 'old and the new'.
- The 20th day: "the later 10th". The Attic month had three days named the 10th (equivalent in a straight sequence to the 10th, 19th, and 20th days). These were distinguished as
- day 10: the 10th of the rising month
- day 19: the earlier 10th
- day 20: the later 10th
This strange juxtapositioning of the two days called the tenth, the earlier and the later, further highlighted the shift into the moon's waning phase.
When a month was to last 29 instead of 30 days (a 'hollow' month), the last day of the month ("the old and new") was pulled back by one day. That is to say, the "2nd day of the waning month" (day 29 in straight sequence) was renamed as month's end.
State calendar
As Ionians, the Athenians had always been divided into four tribes. Although these tribes were never abolished, one of the key reforms at the creation of democracyAthenian democracy
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 508 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model,...
after 506 BC was to distribute citizens under a new system of ten tribes. This was to try and ensure even participation across the whole community. From this point on ten became a kind of hallmark number for the democracy, as so much citizen activity was done through the ten tribes. (For instance, the 10 generals leading the 10 regiments, the 10 sets of public arbitrators, the 10 treasurers of the Delian league, and so on.)
This decimal ordering extended to the creation of a supplementary calendar with ten months. Each year each tribe contributed 50 members to the council of 500 (boule
Boule (Ancient Greece)
In cities of ancient Greece, the boule meaning to will ) was a council of citizens appointed to run daily affairs of the city...
) that played an important role in the administration of the city. For one tenth of the year each tribal fifty was on duty, with a third of them in the council chamber at all times as an executive committee for the state. Their period of office was known as a 'prytany' or state month.
In the 5th century this calendar was sun-based using a year of 365 or 366 days and paying no attention at all to the phases of the moon. One likely arrangement is that the ten prytanies were divided between six months of 37 days followed by four months of 36 days. This would be parallel to the arrangement in the 4th century, given below.
From several synchronised datings that survive it is evident that the political and the festival years did not have to begin or end on the same days. The political new year is attested 15 days out either way from the start of the festival year. This system is known from the 420s; whether it had been in place from the beginning of the ten month system is not clear.
However in 407 BC the two calendars were synchronised to start and end on the same days. Hereafter as described in the 4th century Constitution of the Athenians
Constitution of the Athenians
The Constitution of the Athenians is the name of either of two texts from Classical antiquity, one probably by Aristotle or a student of his, the other attributed to Xenophon, but not by him....
the civic year was arranged as follows:
- months 1-4 lasted 36 days (39 in leap years?)
- months 5-10 lasted 35 days (38 in leap years?)
In years where an extra month was intercalated
Intercalation
Intercalation is the insertion of a leap day, week or month into some calendar years to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. Lunisolar calendars may require intercalations of both days and months.- Solar calendars :...
into the festival calendar, the political months were probably lengthened to 39 and 38 days, a method that would have maintained the balance between the tribes. Evidence, however, is lacking.
These political months had no name, but were numbered and given in conjunction with the name of the presiding tribe (which, as determined by lot at the expiry of their predecessors' term, gave no clue as to the time of year). The days too were numbered and here with a straightforward sequence, running from 1 to the total number of days for that month.
One of the main roles of the civic calendar was to position the four assembly
Ecclesia (ancient Athens)
The ecclesia or ekklesia was the principal assembly of the democracy of ancient Athens during its "Golden Age" . It was the popular assembly, opened to all male citizens over the age of 30 with 2 years of military service by Solon in 594 BC meaning that all classes of citizens in Athens were able...
meetings that were to be held each prytany. Where possible, assembly meetings were not held on festival days, including the monthly festival days clustered at the start of each month. As a result, the meetings were bunched slightly toward the end of the month and made to dodge especially the larger festivals.
A date under this calendar might run "the 33rd day in the 3rd prytany, that of the tribe Erechtheis." This is the style used in Athenian state documents (surviving only as inscriptions). Sometimes, however, a dating in terms of the festival calendar is added as well.
Manipulation of the calendar
The AtticAttica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
was determined on the ground, month by month and year by year, in the light of immediate concerns, political or military. It was in the control of magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
s who were not astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
s. How heavy-handed this interference was is controversial. Some scholars believe that if a festival date fell on a day needed for an assembly
Ecclesia (ancient Athens)
The ecclesia or ekklesia was the principal assembly of the democracy of ancient Athens during its "Golden Age" . It was the popular assembly, opened to all male citizens over the age of 30 with 2 years of military service by Solon in 594 BC meaning that all classes of citizens in Athens were able...
meeting, then an extra day could be inserted by simply repeating the same day name twice.
There is clear evidence that this was practised later. In Athens in 271 BC just before the Great Dionysia
Dionysia
The Dionysia[p] was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia...
four days were inserted between Elaphebolion 9 and 10, putting the calendar on hold. Presumably this was to gain extra rehearsal time for the festival with its performances of tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
and comedy
Ancient Greek comedy
Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece . Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy...
. A similar story comes from the 5th century BC, but at Argos
Argos
Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...
: the Argives, launching a punitive expedition
Punitive expedition
A punitive expedition is a military journey undertaken to punish a state or any group of persons outside the borders of the punishing state. It is usually undertaken in response to perceived disobedient or morally wrong behavior, but may be also be a covered revenge...
in the shadow of the holy month of Karneios when fighting was banned, decided to freeze the calendar to get some extra days of war in. However their allies rejected this rearrangement and went home.
Aristophanes'
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
Clouds, a comedy from 423 BC, contains a speech where a complaint is brought from the moon: the Athenians have been playing round with the months, "running them up and down" so that human activity and the divine order are completely out of kilter. "When you should be holding sacrifices, instead you are torturing and judging." A situation is known to have applied in the 2nd century BC where the festival calendar was so out of sync with the actual cycles of the moon that the lunisolar
Lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures whose date indicates both the moon phase and the time of the solar year. If the solar year is defined as a tropical year then a lunisolar calendar will give an indication of the season; if it is taken as a sidereal year then the calendar will...
date was sometimes given under two headings, one "according to the god", meaning apparently the moon, and the other "according to the archon
Archon
Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...
", meaning the festival calendar itself.
Dating long range events
The modern calendar, as well as regulating the immediate year, is part of a system of chronology that allows events to be dated far into the future and the past. So a given date includes day, month and year.By contrast, the Attic calendar had little interest in ordering the sequence of years. As in most Greek cities, the name of one of the yearly magistrates, at Athens known as the eponymous archon
Archon
Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...
, was used to identify the year in relation to others. That is to say, the sequence of years was matched to a list of names that could be consulted. Instead of citing a numbered year, one could locate a year in time by saying that some event occurred "when X. was archon." This did allow the years to be ordered back in time for a number of generations into the past, but there was no way of dating forward beyond ordinary human reckoning (as in expressions such as "Ten years from now").
There was for instance no use of a century divided into decades. A four year cycle was important which must have helped structure a sense of the passing years: at Athens the festival of the Panathenaia was celebrated on a grander scale every fourth year as the Great Panathenaia. But this was not used as the basis of a dating system.
As both narrowly local and cyclical in focus then, the calendar did not provide a means for dating events in a panhellenically (internationally) comprehensible way. A dating system using the four-yearly Olympiad
Olympiad
An Olympiad is a period of four years, associated with the Olympic Games of Classical Greece. In the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, Olympiads were used as calendar epoch....
s was devised by the Greek Sicilian historian Timaeus
Timaeus (historian)
Timaeus , ancient Greek historian, was born at Tauromenium in Sicily. Driven out of Sicily by Agathocles, he migrated to Athens, where he studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates and lived for fifty years...
(born c.350 BC) as a tool for the historical research, but it was probably never important on a local level.
Sidereal calendar
A third calendar regulating Athenian lives was solar or seasonal. As such, it was fundamental for seasonal activities like farming and sailing. Within the broad divisions of the seasons, it relied on star risings and settings to mark more precise points in time. Star risings are the days when particular starStar
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s or constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....
s that have been below the horizon
Horizon
The horizon is the apparent line that separates earth from sky, the line that divides all visible directions into two categories: those that intersect the Earth's surface, and those that do not. At many locations, the true horizon is obscured by trees, buildings, mountains, etc., and the resulting...
during hours of darkness first appear after sunset. Different star risings were keyed to various farm tasks, such as when to harvest: Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
in the Works and Days urges the farmer to harvest when the Pleiades
Pleiades (star cluster)
In astronomy, the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters , is an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky...
rises (an event which elsewhere is set to mark the end of spring). Such a system was part of general Greek tradition, but fitted to local geography and conditions.
The season
Season
A season is a division of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology, and hours of daylight.Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of revolution...
s were not viewed by Greeks as dividing the year into four even blocks, but rather spring and autumn were shorter tail sections of the overarching seasons, Summer and Winter. These divisions could be formalised by using star risings or settings in relation to the equinox
Equinox
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...
es: so for instance, winter is defined in one medical text as the period between the setting of the Pleiades and the spring.
The older tradition as seen in Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
's Works and Days was extended by astronomical research to the creation of star calendars known as parapegmas. These were stone or wooden tablets listing a sequence of astronomical events, each with a peg hole beside it. Lines of bare peg holes were used to count the 'empty days' between what were taken as the significant celestial events. Often set up in town squares (agora
Agora
The Agora was an open "place of assembly" in ancient Greek city-states. Early in Greek history , free-born male land-owners who were citizens would gather in the Agora for military duty or to hear statements of the ruling king or council. Later, the Agora also served as a marketplace where...
), these tablets put the progression of the year on public display.
This system would have been fundamental to an individual's sense of the advancing year, but it barely intersected with the festival or state calendars. These were more civic in character and required managing to maintain their coherence with the year of the seasons. The seasonal and sidereal
Sidereal
Sidereal, of the stars, may refer to:* Measurements of time:** Sidereal time** Sidereal day** Sidereal month** Sidereal year* Sidereal period of an object orbiting a star* Sidereal astrology...
calendar, on the other hand, was immune to interference. So, Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
can date by the rising of the star Arcturus without having to wade into the confusion of disconnected city-state calendars.
Sources
- Burkert, W. Greek Religion. Oxford, 1985.
- Dunn, F. M. Tampering with the Calendar (Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik), 1999, p. 123, 213-231.
- Hannah, R. Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Ancient World. London, 2005.
- Merrit, B. D. The Athenian Year. Berkeley, 1961.
- Mikalson, J. D. The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year. Princeton, 1975.
- Pritchett, W. K. and O. Neugebauer. The Calendars of Athens. Athens, 1947.
- Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1996: Calendar, Meton, Euctemon, Time reckoning, Birthday.