and subsequently in all Roman leap years: Stern 2010a: 113–14 n. 51). It is
then that some Egyptian months would have been suppressed from the
calendar to make space for new months, named in honour of the new world
rulers.
It comes as no surprise that the calendar of Salamis may thus have preceded
by some years the institution, in Egypt, of the Alexandrian calendar (in 22
BCE). In Cyprus, the Egyptian calendar would not have been viewed as a native
or long-standing tradition, and its reform is unlikely to have met with any
resistance. The adjustments that were made to the Egyptian calendar in
Salamis were relatively minor, but it did not take long for more radical
calendar changes to be made in other parts of Cyprus. A decade or so after
the institution of the Salamis calendar, a completely different calendar was
instituted elsewhere in Cyprus that abandoned all Egyptian features and
conformed almost entirely to the Julian calendar. This‘Cypriot’calendar,
attested only in a medieval manuscript, renamed all its months in honour of
Rome and members of Augustus’family—in such a way as to enable us to date
this calendar to around 15BCE—but in all other respects was modelled entirely
on the Julian calendar.^100 A further calendar was instituted in the last decade
of thefirst centuryBCE, and is attested infirst-centuryCEwestern Cypriot
inscriptions as well as later in thehemerologiaas the calendar‘of Cyprus’and
in other late antique sources (e.g. Epiphanius) as the calendar‘of Paphos’(the
main city of western Cyprus). This calendar also followed the sequence of
Julian month-lengths, but with itsfirst month (Aphrodisios) beginning on 23
September, Augustus’birthday.^101
A New Year on Augustus’birthday—distinct from the Julian New Year of 1
January, yet at the same time expressing loyalty to Augustus and Rome—was
not unique to Cyprus, and may have been institutedfirst in the province of
Asia, as we shall now see. This introduces us to the far more radical calendar
changes that occurred towards the end of thefirst centuryBCEwhenflexible
lunar calendars were converted intofixed solar Julian schemes.
(^100) Cod. Paris 2420 (fos. 205a–209b): Boll (1900) 139–40, Laffi(1967) 43–6, Samuel (1972)
183 – 4. A puzzling feature of this calendar is that its months appear to begin on the second day of
the Julian months (hence a consistent one-day discrepancy from the Julian calendar). Laffi
(1967) 44 and n. 57 convincingly explains this as the result of confusion arising from the
common practice of naming thefirst day of 31-day monthsSebasteand to begin the count of
days from the second day (as‘day 1’). Less plausible is Samuel’s suggestion (1972: 183 n. 2) that
the Cypriot day began in the evening, and that as thefirst of the month began on 1 October in the
evening, its daylight hours occurred on 2 October (if the day began in the evening, would one
expect thefirst month to have begun in the eveningpreceding1 October).
(^101) This calendar will be discussed in detail below, together with the calendar of the province
of Asia. The assumption of Mitford (1961) 117–18) and Samuel (loc. cit.) that this calendar
replacedab initiothe earlier‘Cypriot’calendar (ofc.15BCE) is perhaps unjustified.
Fragmentation: Babylonian and Julian Calendars 273