Calendars in Antiquity. Empires, States, and Societies

power to adjust the calendar as they sawfit.^145 Although these theories rest on substantial arguments (which cannot be reviewed ...

fasti, may well have been related to this process.^148 Cn. Flavius was closely involved with the reform of the tribal system in ...

Egyptians’.^152 Also significant may be the likelihood (and indeed, common assumption) that the astronomer Sosigenes, whom Juliu ...

rationale, as I shall now explain. The Republican 31-day months were left unchanged, as there was no need to increase them. The ...

itself an Egyptian import. As the Canopus decree of 238BCEmakes evident, it was known for quite some centuries in Egypt that the ...

excessive leap years, the emperor Augustus suspended all leap years until 4CE, when the leap year was resumed.^162 It is only fr ...

Bennett argues further that the error of the pontiffs could have been corrected by the pontifex maximus, M. Aemilius Lepidus, wh ...

progression from it. Already in the sixteenth century, Scaliger wrote that‘the Julian calendar...marked a victory in the realm o ...

calendar as a purely scientific exercise, with Caesar engaging a team of philosophers and mathematicians (i.e. astronomers) to d ...

some useful kudos among the ruling elites of the Mediterranean world. This is conveyed at least in Lucan’s epic, where Caesar is ...

The extent to which pontifical tampering with the calendar, e.g. through failure to intercalate, would have been regarded in Rom ...

of the intercalation to the pontiffs (possibly just to the‘minor pontiffs’), rather than to the highest officials in the Senate ...

It is fair to comment that Caesar was, above all, a political creature. Although he employed scientific expertise for the creati ...

Zoroastrian calendar of the Achaemenids, and to a lesser extent, the standard Babylonian calendar of the Near Eastern empires—em ...

discussed in the previous section), but now in terms their administration. The administration of large empires had a more practi ...

Conclusion: the Julian calendar in the Roman Empire The dissemination of the Julian calendar across the Roman Empire was relativ ...

been lunar—were rapidly superseded by the calendar of the Roman Empire and even, perhaps, obliterated from memory.^195 The Julia ...

The result of the institution and diffusion of the Julian calendar in the Roman Empire, and indeed of the whole process describe ...

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Part II The Empires Challenged and Dissolved: Calendar Diversity and Fragmentation ...