Calendars in Antiquity. Empires, States, and Societies

scholarly rationalization.^111 It illustrates how astronomical calendars could be
used by afirst-centuryBCEHellenistic writer as a device to make sense of Greek
calendars that, in the real world, were variegated and followed no apparent
rule or reason.

Parapegmata

An entirely different type of astronomical calendar—characteristically not
lunar, and with very different uses—were the so-called Greekparapegmata.
Normally written on tablets and placed in prominent public places, they were
essentially star charts that listed, in chronological order, annually recurring
astronomical events such as thefirst appearance of a star (or constellation) and
the weather conditions that were believed to come with it. These astronomical
(or‘astro-meteorological’) events were not given a date: indeed, they were
undatable according to any of the Greek calendars, since the latter were lunar
and thus irreconcilable with the motion of stars and seasonal changes of
weather. Instead, the astronomical events were simply listed consecutively
on the chart, together with the intervening days between them; in this way,
theparapegmatapresented an undated but continuous sequence of all the days
in the year. To cite, as an example, an excerpt of aparapegma:

oThe Sun is in Aquarius

o..... ] begins setting in the morning and Lyra sets

oo

oCygnus begins to set acronychally

ooooooooo

oAndromeda begins rising in the morning^112

Each day was represented by a hole in the tablet (represented here byo), in
which a peg could be inserted. Every day, the peg would be moved to the next
hole along the chart, which made it easy to keep track of the days through the
year.
The origin of Greekparapegmatais unclear. The earliest datable attestation,
a Greek document from early third-century Egypt (P. Hibeh 27), comes in the
form of a literary text rather than as a physical tablet.^113 In this text, rather

(^111) A. Jones (2000a) 152–6. It may be possible to read Geminus’account as a history of Greek
astronomicalcalendars, showing how theoretical schemes were successively improved upon by
earlier Greek astronomers; but here again, his account (e.g. regarding the Callippic cycle) may
actually be unreliable ibid.
(^112) Parapegmafragment from Miletus, late 2nd c.BCE(?), translation from Lehoux (2007) 14,
478 – 9 (for the dating 180–1); see further Lehoux (2005). Also cited in Hannah (2005) 59.
(^113) A. Jones (2007) 161–2 and Lehoux (2007) 153–4, 217–23, who revises (pp. 22–6, 142) on
this basis the hitherto common assumption that thefirst astro-meteorologicalparapegmatawere
Calendars of AncientGreece 57