calendars independently from one another, Greek cities also employed differ-
ent sets of month-names, which only enhanced their distinctiveness and
particularism. Disagreement between calendars complicated, no doubt, com-
munications, commerce, and other relations between cities or citizens of
different cities. Public and private documents involving more than one city
(e.g. treaties, contracts, etc.) always needed to be multiply dated, and date
conversion was never straightforward as it did not follow any consistent rule
or pattern. This complication, however, is likely to have been also a source of
local pride. Especially in situations of conflict, calendar particularism would
have contributed to the feeling of autonomy and distinct identities of the rival
cities.
It is no surprise, therefore, that in the context of friendship and alliance
between cities, attempts were conversely made to unify calendrical practice.
Thus a mid-fifth-centuryBCEtreaty drawn up in Argos between the Cretan
cities of Knossos and Tylissos requires them to keep thefirst day of the month
at the same time—which highlights, incidentally, the importance that could be
attached to calendar agreement.^149 We do not know how, in practice, this
agreement was to be implemented; but by the second centuryBCE—whether or
not in continuity with this earlier treaty—the months of the cities of Crete
appear to have been all conterminous.^150 Harmonization of calendar practice
is also evident, in a variety of forms, in other geopolitical regions. In the cities
of Thessaly, the same calendar appears to have been used.^151 In some of the
leagues and‘empires’, the calendar of the dominant city imposed itself on the
other, constituent cities: thus the calendar of Sparta appears to have been used
in the whole of Laconia; the Aetolian calendar is attested outside Aetolia, in
parts of western central Greece that belonged to the Aetolian League; and the
calendar of Miletus was used in its far-flung colonies.^152 But in some leagues,
more egalitarian arrangements were adopted: thus a neutral calendar of purely
numbered months was used in the Achaean League (in the early second
centuryBCE, and possibly also later), though without necessarily displacing
the local calendars of named months.^153 Similary, numbered months attested
in Phocis and in Ozolian Locris may have belonged to‘federal calendars’that
(^149) Meiggs and Lewis (1988) 99–105 no. 42, ll. B21–3, where the fragmentary text is recon-
structed as follows:ðæ[Æ]ôïìåíßÆí ¼ªåí ŒÆôa ôÆPô[a ŒÆôa ôe äüªìÆ]ôe Iì[ç]ïôÝæïí(‘They shall
keep thefirst day of the month at the same [time according to the decision] of both’). Referred to
in Bickerman (1968) 32.
(^150) As evident e.g. in Dittenberger (1915–24) ii, no. 712 (dated 116/15BCE), where the date
given according to each of the three cities of Knossos, Lato, and Olos has different month-names,
but the same day of the month (the 2nd). For further evidence see Samuel (1972) 134–6.
(^151) Ibid. 83–6.
(^152) Laconia: ibid. 93. Aetolian League: ibid. 78. Miletus: ibid. 114–18, and Trümpy (1997)
89 – 153 93 (and for a more general statement, ibid. 1–2).
Samuel (1972) 94–7.
68 Calendars in Antiquity