Ancient Greek Calendars

139
Robert Hannah

Contents
Prehistoric Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1563
Protohistorical Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1564
The Historical Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1565
Intercalary Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1565
New Year’s Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1567
The Greek Calendar Outside Greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1569
The Impact of the Julian Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1569
Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1570
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1570

Abstract
Greek festival calendars were in origin lunar, eventually being aligned with the
sun through various lunisolar intercalary cycles. Each city-state had its own
calendar, whose month names have some, little, or no similarity with those of
other city-states. These names often reflect gods or festivals held in their honor
in a given month, so there is an explicitly sacred character to the calendar. New
Year’s Day could also differ from one state to another, but generally began with
the sighting of the first new moon after one of the four tropical points. Even
the introduction of the Roman Julian calendar brought little uniformity to the
eastern Greek calendars. The calendar is one of the elements which can assist in
understanding the siting of Greek sacred structures.

R. Hannah
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
e-mail: robert.hannah@otago.ac.nz

C.L.N. Ruggles (ed.), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, 1563

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_156,
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
1564 R. Hannah

Prehistoric Greece

In the prehistoric period, the Mycenaean Greeks based their calendars on the moon.
The Linear B tablets from Knossos on Crete, when that palace was under
Mycenaean influence or control (c. 1370 BCE), and from the Mycenaean palace
at Pylos in southern Greece (c. 1200 BCE) include fragments of ritual calendars, in
which the offerings to be made to the gods were listed month by month. The word
for “month” is me-no, which linguistically suggests a relationship with the moon
and therefore basically with a lunar calendar. How this might have been correlated
with the seasonal, solar year is unknown, since the tablets represent a snapshot of
perhaps only a season before their fortuitous baking in the destruction of the
respective palaces. From Knossos, eight month names are preserved, and from
Pylos three, but the two sites share none in common. There were probably regional
differences, as in the later historical period in Greece. All the names are either
theophoric or toponymic, deriving from gods or localities. Four names resemble
later historical months – di-wi-jo (Dios), ra-pa-to (Lapatos), di-pi-si-jo (Dipsios),
and ka-ra-e-ri-jo (Klareon) – thus offering some evidence for continuity across the
so-called Dark Age (Tr€ umpy 1997). Further evidence of continuity may be pro-
vided by the “Bulwer Tablet” from fifth century BCE. Akanthos in Cyprus.
If correctly interpreted, it provides 11 month names. Two of these (ti-wi-o-ne and
la-pa-to-ne) correspond with 2 month names in the calendar of Arcadia in Greece
(again, Dios and Lapatos, respectively). Arcadia is known to be connected with
Cyprus both archaeologically and linguistically from the Late Bronze Age, so there
may be remains in this Cypriot calendar of an earlier Mycenaean system. The tablet
may present the 11 surviving months in the order in which they occur through the
year, beginning with the month la-pa-to-ne in winter, followed later on by a-po-ro-
ti-si-jo (“of Aphrodisios”) and ti-wo-nu-si-o (“of Diwonusios”) in spring, while
ti-wi-o-ne (“of Zeus”) occupies late spring/early summer (Tr€umpy 1997). Although
this list may be specific only to Akanthos, Aphrodite and Dionysos are associated
with springtime elsewhere in the Greek world. The myth and cult of Aphrodite were
dominant in Cyprus, so it would not be surprising if the festival calendars across
Greek Cyprus honored her.

Protohistorical Greece

No calendar as such appears in the poems of Homer and Hesiod (c. 750–700 BCE).
Indeed, only one month name, Lenaion, is attested, and that in a passage in Hesiod’s
Works and Days (line 504), which is sometimes held to be a later interpolation. The
phases of the moon provide a means for timing Odysseus’ return to Ithaka (Odyssey
19.307), and whole months are used to count the length of a pregnancy (Iliad
19.117, compare the Homeric Hymn to Hermes line 11), but overall the year in
these sources was a seasonal and agricultural one, and therefore solar rather than
lunar. Stars and seasons are linked in Homer’s poems (e.g., Sirius with the “dog
days” of summer at Iliad 22.26–31), but the star-based mechanism is better
139 Ancient Greek Calendars 1565

developed in Hesiod’s Works and Days, which is partly an account of the agricul-
tural year. The poet provides ten observations of just five stars or constellations,
which help to distinguish four seasons. The moon too is occasionally used to signal
the proper time for farming activities. A relationship between religion and the star-
based calendar is hinted at by Hesiod in his warning “to thresh the sacred grain of
Demeter, when the strength of Orion first appears


” (Works and Days lines
597–598) (Hannah 2005).

The Historical Period

There is abundant, but often lacunose, evidence for the calendars of the Classical
Greek city-states (put to one side in this discussion are secular, political calendars,
such as those governing the timing of civic committees). The best-known calendar is
inevitably that of Athens, as the evidence is fullest for that most communicative of
cities, while that of its laconic rival, Sparta, remains frustratingly incomplete and
poorly documented. But the calendars of other cities are well documented as a result
of controlled or chance archaeological discoveries, for example, those of Delphi
(as a result of records of slave manumissions lodged with the sanctuary of Apollo),
or of Locri Epizephyrii in South Italy (from bronze tablets recording loans made by
the treasurers of the Temple of Zeus to the city) (Tr€umpy 1997). A full list of months
has been discerned through CT scans of the Antikythera Mechanism, but which city
they belong to remains elusive, save that it must be Doric Greek (Freeth et al. 2008).
These calendars were all lunar, standardly with 12 months to the ordinary year.
The lunar character is indicated, for instance, by the Athenian comic playwright
Aristophanes referring to the moon bringing on the “twenties” of the month as
a sign of the period when interest on loans had to be repaid (Aristophanes, Clouds
lines 16–18). Each month started from the evening appearance of the new moon’s
crescent in the western sky (Aratos, Phainomena lines 733–735: “Whenever a small
moon appears with horns in the west, she indicates a waxing month beginning”.)
(Hannah 2005).
The fundamental problem the Greeks faced in adopting the moon as the measure
of public time was that its cycle does not align well with that of the sun. Various
cycles were constructed to indicate when an extra whole month should be inserted
into the calendar in order to bring calendar and season back into alignment: most
crudely every second year, and then more effectively three times every 8 years (the
octaeteris), and ultimately seven times every 19 years in the so-called “Metonic”
cycle (▶ Chap. 141, “Greek Mathematical Astronomy”).

Intercalary Cycles

The quadrennial games at Delphi and Olympia were governed by eight-year

cycles (Hannah 2005, 2012a). Literary and epigraphic sources testify that the
games were celebrated on the seventh day of the month Boukatios, which was
1566 R. Hannah

Table 139.1 The Pythian Games in the Delphic calendar

Month Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 Y9
Apellaios 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Boukatios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Boathoos 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Heraios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Daidaphorios 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Poitropios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Amalios 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Bysios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Theoxenios 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Endyspoitropios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Herakleios 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30
Ilaios 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 29
Intercalary 30 30 30
Sum of months 49 50

the second month of the Delphic lunar year, with the first falling after the summer
solstice. In order to celebrate the Pythian Games in the same lunar month,
Boukatios, every 4 years, an alternating interval of 49 and 50 months between
successive celebrations had to occur. The table above illustrates how an octaeteris
could run at Delphi in support of the Pythian Games. The intercalary month is here
added at the end of the relevant years, but it was most likely inserted midway
through the year (Table 139.1).
An octaeteris in Athens was hypothesized by Dinsmoor to help fix the date of the
particular summer solstice sunrise toward which he believed the Older Parthenon
on the Acropolis was oriented (Dinsmoor 1939). Dinsmoor expressed his method-
ology in pseudo-algebraic form:

X ¼ Ar þ R þ C þ As

where X was the usually unknown date of foundation, Ar the archaeological

evidence with regard to the date, R the religious evidence concerning the temple’s
cult, C the artificial astronomy underpinning the local festival calendar, and As the
natural astronomical observations. Dinsmoor posited a date of foundation for the
Older Parthenon of 31 August 488 BCE. The year is within the range – between
490 and 480 BCE, and nearer the earlier than the later year – where modern
archaeology now places the foundation of the unfinished temple, but the fixation
on the sunrise, which Dinsmoor inherited from earlier scholarship, is generally
dismissed as misguided. Nonetheless, his methodology deserves respect, combin-
ing as it does both scientific and cultural elements, and there is no doubting his
mastery of the intricate calendrical details which underpinned his choice of year
(Hannah 2012b).
139 Ancient Greek Calendars 1567

The 19-year cycle is commonly called the Metonic after its Athenian inventor,
Meton, who devised it in the 430s BCE, although the cycle was in use
in Mesopotamia at least from the second half of the sixth century BCE,
and systematically governed intercalations from 485 BCE (Britton 2007;
▶ Chap. 173, “Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy”). In the Metonic cycle, an
extra month was added in 7 out of the 19 years, but different systems appear to have
been used to decide which 7 years should gain the month. Dinsmoor, for example,
deduced that the intercalary months should have been inserted in years 2, 5, 8, 10, 13,
16, and 18 (Dinsmoor 1931). It is probable that the cycle was used by the Athenians to
regulate their political calendar through the Hellenistic period (Osborne 2003), and
perhaps into the Imperial Roman period as well (M€ uller 1991). It may even be that the
well-known complaint in Aristophanes’ Clouds (lines 615–26) about missed festivals
is a commentary not on haphazard intercalation in the calendar, as is commonly
supposed, but rather on the difficulties encountered in instituting the Metonic cycle
as a regulator for the local calendar (Hannah 2005). Striking new evidence from the
Antikythera Mechanism demonstrates the use of the Metonic cycle in conjunction
with a Doric civil calendar well outside the sphere of Athenian political influence in
the late Hellenistic period. It has been deduced that the Metonic cycle inserted the
intercalary month probably in years 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, and 17, and it has further been
presumed that its use with a regional calendar not otherwise attested in scientific
literature indicates that the cycle may have been regularly used in ordinary civil
calendars by 100 BCE (Freeth et al. 2008).

New Year’s Day

New Year’s Day could differ from city to city in the Greek world, because each city
began its year with the first new moon after or around the time of one of the four
tropical points of the solar year – the summer and winter solstices and the spring and
autumn equinoxes. How these tropical points were discovered is unknown, although
Hesiod (Works and Days lines 479, 564, 663) displays early awareness of the
solstices. It may be that empirical observation provided a marker – this would be
relatively easier for the apparent stop-start movements of the sun along the horizon
at the solstices than for its highly mobile, ephemeral movements at the equinoxes.
Early sundials marking local noon were probably too imprecise to demarcate these
points (Hannah 2009). The mountainous topography of Greece lends itself to such
observations. A case has been made for the use of Mt. Lykabettos in Athens, when
viewed from the political meeting space of the Pnyx, as a marker for the summer
solstice sunrise and hence as a forewarning of the first new moon thereafter, which
signaled New Year’s Day (Fig. 139.1; Hannah 2009). It may also be that an
equivalent date was provided by Babylonian records, which then had to be translated
into local Greek terms. It is possible that artificial schemata of this kind governed the
placement of the remaining points once one point had been fixed. The varying
lengths of the four astronomical seasons were the subject of debate among the
Greek astronomers from the fifth century BCE (Bowen and Goldstein 1988).
1568 R. Hannah

Fig. 139.1 Sunrise at the summer solstice (21 June 2011) over Mt. Lykabettos in Athens, as seen
from the Pnyx (Photograph R. Hannah)

Table 139.2 The lunar calendars of Athens, Delphi, Delos, and Phokis
Athens Delphi Delos Phokis
Hekatombaion Apellaios Hekatombaion Tenth
Metageitnion Boukatios Metageitnion Eleventh
Boedromion Boathoos Bouphonion Twelfth
Pyanepsion Heraios Apatourion First
Maimakterion Daidaphorios Aresion Second
Poseideon Poitropios Posideon Third
Gamelion Amalios Lenaion Fourth
Anthesterion Bysios Hieros Fifth
Elaphebolion Theoxenios Galaxion Sixth
Mounichion Endyspoitropios Artemision Seventh
Thargelion Herakleios Thargelion Eighth
Skirophorion Ilaios Panemos Ninth

The table above of four Greek calendars illustrates both the first month of the
year (in bold) and, incidentally, the variance in month names even among city-
states bound ethnically and politically as Athens and Delos were (Table 139.2).
In Athens and Delphi, the new year began after the summer solstice, whereas in
Delos, it started after the winter solstice, and in Phokis after the autumn equinox.
139 Ancient Greek Calendars 1569

The entirely secular, numerically named months of Phokis are notable, and may
reflect a need to place under one common calendar the non-urbanized, rural
communities of the region.

The Greek Calendar Outside Greece

The Macedonian calendar, whose new year also began after the autumn equinox,
became the most utilized Greek calendar throughout the Hellenized world in the wake
of the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). The months were the
following: Dios, Apellaios, Audnaios, Peritios, Dystros, Xanthikos, Artemisios,
Daisios, Panemos, Loios, Gorpiaios, and Hyperberetaios. In the conquered Persian
Empire, the Macedonian calendar slotted into the much older native lunisolar calendar
without any loss (▶ Chap. 179, “Ancient Persian Skywatching and Calendars”).
In Egypt, however, where the calendar of 365 days was used, the Macedonian
calendar was absorbed but lost its lunar character entirely as the Macedonian
months were made to fit the regular Egyptian ones. The lack of a mechanism to
take account of the roughly one-quarter day by which the solar year exceeds
365 days caused the Egyptian year to wander slowly but regularly ahead of the
true solar year (▶ Chap. 131, “Ancient Egyptian Calendars”). The Egyptians
accepted this drift, consciously wanting the festivals of the gods to wander through
all the seasons of the year in the course of the 1,461 Egyptian years in which it took
their year to realign with the sun. But it seems their Greek rulers were less satisfied
with the slow drift, and a decree was passed in 238 BCE under the King Ptolemy III
Euergetes to introduce a leap day every fourth year. Evidence suggests it briefly
governed the Alexandrian calendar, but it did not take hold outside the metropolis,
and even in Alexandria, it soon failed (Bennett 2012). It was an Alexandrian Greek,
Sosigenes, who later formulated for Julius Caesar the Roman solar calendar in
46 B.C.E. (Pliny, Natural History 18. 211–212), which eventually enforced the
4 year leap day on the Roman world, including Egypt, and with which we still live.

The Impact of the Julian Calendar

While it appears that the Athenian calendar retained its lunar character well into the
Imperial Roman period, other parts of the Greek world adopted the solar, Julian
calendar in different ways. The Roman governor of Asia, Paullus Fabius Maximus,
enacted a decree to take effect in 8 or 5 BC, requiring the Greek cities of the Roman
province of Asia to adopt the Julian calendar, and with it Augustus’s birthday,
23 September, as New Year’s Day. This was no great shift, however, as a number
of these states already used the autumn equinox as the solar tropic from which
their lunisolar calendars began, and some were also familiar with parapegmata
organized by 12 zodiacal months (Lehoux 2007; ▶ Chap. 144, “Greco-Roman
Astrometeorology”), and so already utilized a solar method of reckoning time.
The old Macedonian lunar months were retained in name (except that Dios is
1570 R. Hannah

Table 139.3 The new Asian Greek month Julian date of first day of month
Julian calendar instituted by
Paullus Fabius Maximus Kaisar 23 September
Apellaios 24 October
Audnaios 23 November
Peritios 24 December
Dystros 24 January
Xandikos 21 February
Artemision 24 March
Daisios 23 April
Panemos 24 May
Loos 23 June
Gorpiaios 24 July
Hyperberetaios 24 August

renamed Kaisar, i.e., Caesar), but they are shifted in length to suit the new Julian
equivalents, each starting on the ninth day, by Roman inclusive reckoning, before
the kalends (first day) of the following month, as Table 139.3 illustrates (Buxton
and Hannah 2005):
Cities in Hellenized Palestine followed either the Egyptian model or the Asian,
but the transition to the Julian calendar was not always smooth (Hannah 2005).
Later hemerologia collate the Julian calendars of various eastern provinces and
cities, including Ephesos and Asia Pamphylia (Samuel 1972). The months are the
old Macedonian ones by name, but they are now of fixed lengths which allow
the year to correspond with the Roman Julian year of 365 days, rather than having
lengths based on the moon and adding up to 354 days.

Cross-References

▶ Ancient Egyptian Calendars

▶ Ancient Persian Skywatching and Calendars
▶ Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy
▶ Calendars and Astronomy
▶ Greco-Roman Astrometeorology
▶ Greek Mathematical Astronomy

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