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| this
day in ancient history |
| about
this day in ancient history |
Everyone has seen a feature in their local newspaper called
something like "Today in History". Unfortunately for we
devotees of ancient Greece and Rome, that particular feature tends
to give rather short shrift to the time period we would all like to
read more about. To a certain extent, this is understandable: we
quite simply do not have definite dates for a great many of the
major events of the ancient world. At the same time, matters of
figuring out calendrical equivalencies (say that ten times fast)
have filled scholarly papers for generations and often an equivalent
date simply is a matter of educated guesswork. But even when we do
have absolute dates, it is an unfortunate feature of post-postmodern
culture that many of the names and events are meaningless to the
vast majority of people and so not worth relating. This Day in
Ancient History is an attempt to fill this obvious lacuna in the
mass media and provide readers with an idea both of the significant
'historical' events which occurred on a particular day as well as
provide an idea of what festivals or other cultural activities the
people of Ancient Athens or Rome might have been celebrating on a
particular day.
About
the Roman Calendar
Prior
to the reform (replacement is a better word) of the calendar by
Julius Caesar, the Romans used a calendar which was made up of
twelve familiarly-named months of varying lengths: Martius,
Maius, Quintilis (later known as Julius),
and October each had 31 days; Ianuarius, Aprilis,
Iunius, Sextilis (later known as Augustus),
September, November and December each had 29 days; Februarius had 28
days. That provided for a 355-day year which is, probably
uncoincidentally, the length of a lunar year. Obviously it wouldn't
take very long for such a calendar to get out of whack with reality,
so it was the practice (apparently) to regularly 'intercalate' a
month (i.e. insert a new month) of 22 (sometimes 23) days in
alternating years after the festival known as Terminalia
(Feb. 23). This month was referred to as Intercalaris and
would have the last five days of February added onto it, resulting
in a month of either 27 or 28 days. [Something I've never quite
figured out: given the apparent importance of birthdays to the
Romans (to judge by epigraphy), when they claimed to have lived 'x
number of years, x number of months, x number of days', how long
were the years?].
Unfortunately even with the provisions for intercalations, the
calendar of the Roman Republic often went out of whack anyway and
Julius Caesar decided to fix things once and for all (or so he
thought). By virtue of his being pontifex maximus, he threw out the
old calendar and replaced it with a calendar which had 365.25 days,
which astronomers in Egypt and elsewhere had long known to be the
actual length of a 'tropical year'. Caesar also fiddled with the
number of days in the months to what we are used to, and made
provisions for an extra day in February (February 24 happened twice;
that would be handy if you had a term paper due, no?).
Unfortunately, because the Romans counted inclusively and the folks
who told Caesar about this calendar didn't, subsequent pontifices
were adding a day every three years instead of every four, and so
Augustus would later have to correct this.
The final thing to note about the Roman calendar is that they
had a somewhat peculiar system of deciding the 'number' of the day.
The first day of every month was known as Kalendae (the
'kalends'); the fifth day (or, in certain months, the seventh) was
referred to as Nonae (the 'nones'), the thirteenth (or, in
certain months, the fifteenth) was referred to as Idus (the
'Ides'). All other days were referred to by counting backwards from
these fixed points in the month. And so, for example, while the
Roman equivalent of January 1 would be Kalendae Ianuariae
(often abbreviated Kal. Ian.), January 2 would be designated
ante diem IV Nonas Januarias (IV Non. Ian). And
since January is a day when the 'Nones' falls on the equivalent of
the fifth, January 4 was designated pridie Nonas Ianuarias (pr
Non. Ian).
The upshot of all this is that This Day in Ancient History
provides the date equivalencies according to the calendar
implemented by Julius Caesar, using the peculiar system of
designating days described above. In some cases, this will be
somewhat anachronistic, especially when providing day equivalencies
for events which happened (or festivals celebrated) prior to this
reform (e.g. there was no such thing as September 30 prior to Julius
Caesar's calendar). As far as I'm aware, though, ceteris paribus,
the days will only be one or two days off and I'm sure that won't
offend the pax deorum.
About
the Athenian Calendar
About
the Athenian calendar only one thing can really be said with
certainty: it existed. Other than that, scholars agree that
Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 43.2) tells us two things about the calendar in
the fifth century:1) that it was a lunar calendar (and so had 355
days) and that the 'prytany calendar' (i.e. the period of time when
a particular tribe had control of the agenda of the Council of 500)
ran along side it. From there, scholarly opinion is rather diverse:
for example, there is one camp which believes that the Athenian year
began with the first new moon after the summer solstice, although
this is not attested anywhere. There is a camp which believes that
the Athenian system of months consisted of alternating 'hollow'
(29-day) and 'full' (30-day) months. Another camp would see a
different pattern of hollow and full months. There does not seem to
be agreement on whether the first month (Hekatombaion) would have
been 'hollow' or 'full'. Dates are often given a designation kat
'archonta ('according to the archon'), which seems to be unanimously
tied to the regular civil calendar, while we also see dates kata
theon ('according to the god') which appears to refer to a strict
lunar calendar, so we might have competing calendars [query: which
archon did the reckoning?]
As is usually the case in ancient history, the amount of ink
spilled on a particular subject is inversely proportional to what we
actually know about it, so quite a bit has been written on these
matters and, unfortunately, the more one reads, the less one is
convinced by any of the arguments. Similarly, the more one reads the
more one realizes why the Athenian calendar of the fifth century
doesn't get nearly the same press as the Roman Calendar of Julius
Caesar. Be that as it may, I have decided that it is possible to
make use of an Athenian calendar by a sort of 'fiction' based on the
following assumptions:
1. The Athenian year did begin with the first visible New Moon
after the Summer Solstice. The visible new moon, for the sake of
this calendar, comes two days after the so-called astronomical new
moon. I arrived at this both by advice from my colleague George
Pesely (at Austin Peay University) and from looking at the lunar
images at the Old Farmer's
Almanac website.
2. The Athenian 'day' ran from sunset to sunset, and so a
particular day actually began 'the day before' by our reckoning and
ended on sunset 'the same day' by our reckoning. For all intents and
purposes, this means our days and their days are equivalent for the
daylight hours.
3. I'm assuming the Athenians had an official who actually went
out looking for the first visible new moon (my guess would be the
archon basileus) and who would officially announce the beginning of
a new month when he observed it. I'm also assuming this official was
rather scrupulous in his observations and wasn't influenced by
politics or debt problems to fiddle with the calendar (a major
fiction in itself!).
4. Given the foregoing, this is what I've come up with: the
Solstice came on June 29 of this year (2001). The astronomical new
moon coincided with the Solstice. By my reckoning, the first visible
new moon would be June 23. This date I have designated Hekatombaion
1.
5. Instead of trying to figure out whether Hekatombaion was
'full' or 'hollow', I'm assuming the archon or whoever would simply
wait for the next visible new moon. The next astronomical new moon
was on July 20, making July 22 by my reckoning, the beginning of the
next month Metageitnion . The same process will be followed for the
rest of the year. By next August it will probably be about ten days
out of whack, but we can intercalate then (not much happens in the
Athenian calendar in August anyway)
My
Sources
For
matters calendrical, there are quite a few works out there which are
worth reading. E.J. Bickerman's Chronology of the Ancient World
(London 1968) is a nice introduction to the calendars of the Greek
world and Rome, written at a level that a layperson can understand
and providing many useful equivalencies of dates, reigns, etc.,
although other scholars take issue with many of his assumptions.
Also embracing numerous (really numerous!) calendars of the Greek
and Roman worlds is Alan E. Samuel's Greek and Roman Chronology
(Munich 1972), which is part of the massive Handbuch der
Altertumswissenschaft but still written in English. The Roman
calendar gets monograph treatment in Pierre Brind'Amour's Le
Calendrier Romain (Ottawa 1983). As for the Athenian calendar,
the 'camps' mentioned above tend to be, on the one hand, followers
of B.D. Merritt The Athenian Year (Los Angeles 1961) [along
with other works] or W.K. Pritchett The Choiseul Marble.
Pritchett also collaborated with O. Neugebauer to pen The Calendars
of Athens (Cambridge 1947). .
In regards to the events which happened on a particular day, I
am indebted heavily to H.H. Scullard's Festivals and Ceremonies
of the Roman Republic (Ithaca 1981) in conjunction with various
translations of Ovid's Fasti and H.W. Parke's Festivals
of the Athenians (London 1977) in regards to religious matters.
Dates of actual events come from various sources, both print and on
the web, although my major source for Roman Imperial events is
Dietmar Kienast's Romische Kaisertabelle (Darmstadt, 1990).
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