error was corrected by the emperor Augustus with leap years at four-year
intervals (see Chapter 4. 3 and Table 5.4). It is not impossible that the
Alexandrian calendar played a decisive part in this process: just as Julius
Caesar had drawn on Egyptian expertise when instituting his calendar, Au-
gustus may have taken (or rediscovered) the four-year interval from the
Alexandrian calendar.^90 If so, Augustus’intervention should be regarded as
the final stage in the dialectical interface between Roman and Egyptian
calendars which had begun under Julius Caesar, and which eventually led to
their stabilization and permanent alignment.
CappadociaThefirst calendar in the Roman East to adapt to the Julian calendar was not
the Egyptian, however, but probably the Cappadocian. In Chapter 4 we have
seen that the Cappadocian calendar was originally none other but the Persian
Zoroastrian calendar, itself a derivation of the Egyptian calendar, which would
have been introduced in Cappadocia as an official imperial calendar under
Persian Achaemenid rule. The Persian origins of the Cappadocian calendar
are evident from its Avestan month-names as well as from its structure which,
according to thehemerologia, consisted still in the Roman period of twelve 30-
day months andfive epagomenal days. Its adaptation to the Julian calendar
would have involved, as with the Alexandrian calendar, the addition of a sixth
epagomenal day in Julian leap years.
According to thehemerologia, the Cappadocian New Year (i.e. the day
following the epagomenal days) corresponded in the Roman period to 12
December, a date that appears rather arbitrary and in need of explanation. As
stated above, thehemerologiaare problematic as evidence because they do not
necessarily represent the calendars at the time of their original adaptation to
the Julian calendar. But if we assume, as is perhaps not unreasonable, that the
New Year on 12 December does go back to when the leap year wasfirst
instituted (rather than representing some later development in the Cappado-
cian calendar), this date must presumably have been the New Year of theold
(^90) Dependence on the Alexandrian calendar may also explain why Julian leap years were
resumed by Augustus in 4CE—thus establishing a pattern that has remained unchanged until
today—which is out of sequence from 8BCE, whether in a sequence of four-year intervals (4BCE,
1 CE, 5, 9) or three-year intervals (5, 2BCE,2CE, 5, 8) (assuming Bennett’s model; see Table 5.4,
and Ch. 4 n. 162). It is possible that Augustus deliberately set the Julian leap year as closely as
possible to that of the Alexandrian calendar (which occurred in 3CE), so as to minimize the
period of one-day shift between the calendars (between the Alexandrian sixth epagomenal day
on 29 August 3CEand the Julian bissextile day of 25 February 4CE, the relationship between
the two calendars is shifted by one day, with 1 Thoth on 30 August instead of 29 August; see
Table 5.4).
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 269