and predictions between the early third centuryBCEand the mid-first century
CE,^100 and it is likely to have been constructed primarily for this purpose.
The need for an astronomical calendar or cycle of this kind was due to the
complete inadequacy of civil calendars and eponymous year-counts for
the record of astronomical events, not only because they differed from one
city to the next and thus were only of local value, but also because within a
single city, the calendars were so irregular and unpredictable that generations
later—indeed, even a few years later—the civil date of an astronomical event
would have lost any precise significance. Astronomical calendars, by contrast,
provided a precise, long-term chronological framework that was at once stable
and commonly known.^101
As far as we know, astronomical calendars were not used as long-term
dating schemes for any other purpose. They were not used, for example, by
historians for dating past historical events, even though these calendars were
unique in providing an absolute chronological scheme. In one passage Dio-
nysius of Halicarnassus (1. 63) may be using the Callippic cycle to give a
precise Athenian date to the fall of Troy in 1184BCE, but this would have been
most exceptional.^102 Herodotus and Thucydides—the founding fathers of
historiography—generally refrain from dating events at all.^103 The only chro-
nological markers Thucydides uses are seasonal (i.e. winter or summer),
astronomical (e.g. the solstice), or agricultural (e.g.‘when the wheat was
ripe’), all of which were somewhat indefinite and vague, but commonly
known and not dependent on any specific civil calendar.^104 In contemporary
and later scientific, Hippocratic, and Peripatetic works, dates are usually
(^100) A. Jones 2000a, with citation and discussion of the evidence; on pp. 156–7 he suggests that
astronomical calendars may also have been used for the construction ofparapegmata(on which
see below).
(^101) For similar reasons, the Egyptian calendar was also used by Greek astronomers for
astronomical dates, eventually superseding the Callippic cycle; see in summary A. Jones (2007)
149.
(^102) Ibid. 150, but Jones fails to note the exceptional nature of this usage. For other interpreta-
tions of this passage, see Grafton and Swerdlow (1988) 19.
(^103) See Bouvier (2000), who argues further that modern scholars have resisted this observa-
tion because it contradicts the modern perception that history—of which Herodotus and
Thucydides are supposedly the founders 104 —can only be grounded on afirm chronological scheme.
Seasons: Thucydides 5. 20. 1–2; astronomy: 7. 16, 8. 39 (winter solstice), 2. 78 (rise of
Arcturus); agriculture (when the wheat is ripe): 2. 19, 3. 1, etc. See Bouvier (2000) 125–31,
arguing that in this respect Thucydides was no more advanced than Hesiod (to whom the same
problematic applies, since inWorks andDayshe delineates an agricultural year with reference to
mostly astronomical events, but without using any calendar dates—with one exception only: see
A. Jones 2007: 150–4, also with similar examples from later, Hippocratic sources). Herodotus
refrains even from these forms of dating; for a possible explanation, see Bouvier (2000) 139–41.
See also Bickerman (1968) 56, Bowen and Goldstein (1994) 704 n. 30, Feeney (2007) 18. Hannah
(2005) 46 refers to Thucydides’dating system as a‘seasonal calendar’(alongside the festival and
prytanic calendars in use as Athens), but the term‘calendar’is not really applicable here (except
in a very broad sense), since Thucydides’time-markers do not afford him the means of
reckoning days precisely and (most importantly) continuously.
54 Calendars in Antiquity