namely Gaza and Ascalon, or structurally similar to it, namely Arabia and
Cappadocia.
But although thehemerologiaare one of our most important sources, their
value as evidence remains limited in that they do not provide the historical
context of the calendars that they list. Moderns scholars have generally
assumed that the calendars of thehemerologiawere used in real life in their
respective cities and provinces, and lasted without change throughout the
Roman period, from the arrival of the Romans until the end of Antiquity
(e.g., implicitly, Samuel 1972). But whilst this can be verified in a few cases—
the Alexandrian calendar, for example, which is well attested in epigraphic,
documentary, and literary sources, from its inception in thefirst centuryBCE
until the late Roman period (see e.g. Hagedorn andWorp 1994) and indeed
until the present day, in the Coptic and Ethiopian churches—we cannot make
this assumption for all the calendars in thehemerologia. By their very nature,
thehemerologiaare likely to simplify, schematize, and ossify a historical reality
that one expects to have been far more complex,flexible, and open to change.
Little is known, furthermore, about when, how, and why the calendars of
Asia Minor and the Near East converted from a lunar Seleucid to solar Julian
schemes, and why they did so in so many different ways. Thehemerologiaare
uninformative; but some answers to these questions can be inferred from a
remarkable group of inscriptions that relate to the institution of the calendar
of the province of Asia, and date itfirmly to the last decade of thefirst century
BCE. As we shall see, these inscriptions suggest that cities and provinces of the
Roman East adapted their calendars to the Julian calendar for mainlypolitical
reasons, i.e. to express allegiance to the Roman Empire. However, their
reluctance to switch to the Julian calendar in its pure form and the retention
of local calendrical traditions expressed, simultaneously, a calculated measure
of political independence and patriotic particularism. The mixed and ambig-
uous political allegiances of the cities and provinces of the Roman East
explains why their calendars were only partially adapted to the Julian calendar,
and why in the Roman period they remained so diverse.
The adaptation to the Julian calendar may have been motivated also by
other reasons, in particular, administrative efficiency. The adoption of afixed,
365-day year (with regular leap years) stabilized the relationship of local to
Julian calendars on a permanent basis, which greatly facilitated the conversion
of dates from one calendar to the other. This would have been to the benefitof
the imperial and civic administration, as well as more generally to commerce
and legal transactions. Interestingly, however, this benefit is not mentioned in
ancient sources such as the province of Asia inscriptions. It also does not
account for the diversity of calendars in the Roman East: administrative
efficiency would have demanded, indeed, that all provinces and cities adopt
an identical calendar. Contrary to modern expectations, ancient calendars
were not driven by utilitarian advantages, but rather by political loyalties.
262 Calendars in Antiquity