were shared in common by these neighbouring cities.^154 Calendar uniformity
is still evident in the leagues of Greek cities in the Roman period.^155 The
mechanism through which this was achieved remains to us unknown.
Thekata theonor true lunar calendar—in common use, for example, in
Attica and in the island of Euboea, alongside local civil calendars (see above,
}4)—was another way of balancing out the particularism of civil calendars
with common, calendrical unity. The emergence of this calendar in the third–
second centuriesBCEreflects, perhaps, a trend towards political solidarity and
hence also cultural integration that was developing in this period, in Greece,
under the shadow of the neighbouring Seleucid Empire. This massive Helle-
nistic empire, extending in the third century right up to the western coast of
Asia Minor, employed one official calendar—Macedonian, assimilated to the
Babylonian calendar (see Chapter 5)—throughout its territories, and this
single-calendar policy may well have had an impact on calendar practices in
Greece. Thekata theoncalendar, moreover, would have been very similar to
the Seleucid Babylonian calendar, in that both were truly lunar and strictly
regulated by new moon observation (see Chapter 2). Seleucid influence is also
discernible in this period in the apparent regularization of Greek civil calen-
dars and their closer conformity to the phases of the moon, leading to more
frequent agreement between different civil calendars—although even empiri-
cal observation of the new moon could lead, in different parts of Greece, to
marginal, one-day differences, through which a measure of particularism was
eagerly cultivated and retained.^156
In his preface toGreekandRoman Chronology, Alan Samuel concluded:
I am reasonably comfortable with this assumption of great individualism in local
calendaric practice. Although I am one to argue that classical civilization is, in a
way, a unity, and certainly must be studied as a whole, I tend to think that in this
unified and cohesive culture there existed an extraordinary degree of local
particularity, and that this particularism persisted in the face of continuing
cultural, economic, and political influences with centripetal tendencies. The
calendars, central as they are to life in all the cities, show this particularism if
they are not coalesced by a modern passion for order, and the longevity of many
of these calendars shows the vitality of local traditions (Samuel 1972: p. ix).
These eloquent words remain on balance correct, though only with reference
to Greek calendars (on which Samuel’s work is indeed focused). Notwith-
standing the various uses of common calendars in political leagues, the rise of
(^154) Ibid. 70–2, 75–7 respectively; Trümpy (1997) 203–4 (calling it a‘Bundeskalender’);
Hannah (2005) 78–9.
(^155) Thus thekoinon(league) of the Roman province of Asia, in its decree of 8BCE, implies that
the same lunar calendar was used in all its cities (see Ch. 5 n. 117), and so inscriptions of the
koinon 156 of Macedonia in the mid-3rd c.CE(Ch. 6 n. 8).
For pertinent examples see above, near nn. 51–3.
Calendars of AncientGreece 69