‘illegitimate’, implicit in these paradigms, obscures the complexity of the
political situations that led to manipulation of the calendar and that were
always open to a variety of intentions and interpretations.
In ancient literary sources, calendar tampering by political rulers occasion-
ally comes under criticism, though not because the system itself was consid-
ered undesirable or illegitimate, nor on the basis of a distinction between
public good and personal gain. Xenophon is clearly unimpressed with the
Argives’attempt to put off war through calendar manipulation (as were their
enemies, the Lacedaemonians), and Plutarch objects to Agesilaus’intercala-
tion for the purpose of raising additional taxes (see above). The former
involved the public good, the latter personal gain; and what was criticized in
these cases is not the system, but only its abuse. The same Plutarch has no
criticism of Alexander’s renaming of Daisios at the Granicus, or of his
intercalation of day(s) at the siege of Tyre—quite on the contrary, these
episodes exemplify Alexander’s resourcefulness and initiative. But Plutarch
does condemn the Athenians’renaming of the months in 302BCE, presumably
because the sequence of months was disrupted (Beodromion, normally the
third month, was relocated after Anthesterion, the eighth), which was not
allowed within the terms of the Athenian calendar and went well beyond
acceptable norms of calendar tampering.
The only text, as far as I can tell, that may be interpreted as a critique of the
system itself and not just its abuse is the moon’s tirade in Aristophanes’Clouds
615 – 26 (cited above). In the context of a comedy, a tirade such as this should
obviously not be taken too seriously; but it does express, at the very least, an
element of unease at the deviation of the calendar from the phases of the moon
as a result of tampering. This unease may have been religiously motivated—
implicit in the moon’s complaint that sacrifices are being offered on the wrong
days—or pragmatically motivated, as in daily life it would have been more
useful to be able to estimate the day of the calendar month by observing the
moon, its shape, size, and/or position. Similarly, Plato’s description of an ideal
well-regulated calendar that conforms entirely to the seasons may express a
veiled criticism of the prevailing situation (Plato,Laws7. 809D). Unfortunate-
ly, these are lone passages; it is difficult to establish how common this kind of
criticism might have been.
Particularism and unityA consequence of calendar tampering, i.e. the widespread practice of inter-
calating and suppressing months and days, was the tremendous variety be-
tween ancient Greek calendars. In spite of being in principle all lunar, the days
of months of different cities were often very different from one another, and
their months were often very inconsistently related. Besides reckoning their
Calendars of AncientGreece 67