thefirst millenniumBCEwas followed in later Antiquity by their fragmenta-
tion. This interpretation, however, is over-simplistic. It is hardly disputable
that thefixed calendars that were formed during thefirst millenniumBCE,
especially the Julian calendar, remainedfirmly established as standard until
the end of Antiquity and well beyond. In political terms, moreover, grand-
scale imperialism continued unabated until the end of Antiquity without
giving way, in any sense, to political fragmentation. The gradual disintegration
of the Seleucid Empire during the third–first centuriesBCEin Asia Minor and
the Near East was only short-lived; it was followed not long after with the rise
and domination of the Parthian and (later) Sasanian Empires in the east, and
the Roman Empire in the west. Each of these empires employed or restored
the use of standard imperial calendars (Babylonian/Macedonian, Persian, and
Julian, respectively) throughout their territories.
Nevertheless, the post-Seleucid period was critical in establishing a tradition
of calendar differentiation in Asia Minor and the Near East which the Roman
Empire was only partially able to reverse. Although lunar calendars were
abandoned soon after the arrival of the Romans and replaced with 365-day
Julian-type calendars, the Asian and Near Eastern calendars in the Roman
period retained local characteristics and remained, almost until the end of
Antiquity, considerably fragmented and diverse. The Julian calendar proper
did not come into use in the Near East until the sixth century—shortly before
the Muslim conquest, and too late to have had any significant, long-term
effect. In this respect, calendar fragmentation was much more evident in late
Antiquity than in the earlier period. In Asia Minor and the Near East, the
dominance of a standard, official imperial calendar reached its apex in the
Achaemenid and Seleucid periods, but was never to recover thereafter.^1
The failure of the Roman Empire to impose a single Julian calendar in Asia
Minor, the Near East, as well as in Egypt and Greece runs counter to my thesis,
in Part I, that the rise of large empires led to the unification and standardiza-
tion of the calendar. But it is important to stress that the rapid adoption of
365-day calendars in the early Roman period throughout Asia Minor, Egypt,
and the Near East was a clear expression, indeed an intrinsic part, of the
integration of these provinces into the Roman Empire. The reason why these
eastern provinces did not adopt the Julian calendar itself, and preserved
instead a variety of local, Julianized calendars, can be explained in more
than one way. It was partly the survival of a post-Seleucid tradition of calendar
differentiation; but it was largely also one of the numerous ways through
which the cities and provinces of Hellenistic East asserted their independent
identities vis-à-vis the Roman Empire, reflecting in many cases their
(^1) This contrasts with theWest, i.e. western Europe and the western half of the Mediterranean
basin, where the use of a standard andfixed official calendar began and culminated in the Roman
period with the universal use of the Julian calendar (see Ch. 4, end).
232 Calendars in Antiquity