sisis also clear, for the focus on Athens was a vital part of the paradigm that the
Romans had taken over from the Western Greeks. The Athenocentric tendency
that we observed in Aulus Gellius is, then, not simply a function of the Atheno-
centrism of the Second Sophistic, but a long-standing feature of the intellectual
world of the Hellenistic Mediterranean.^83 The chronographical tradition in partic-
ular shows a strong focus on Athens. The so-called Marmor Parium, anchored on
the Athenian archon of 264/3 b.c.e., is principally organized around Athens; it
uses archons as the real backbone, and it keeps Sparta on the sidelines, for exam-
ple, even to the extent of describing Plataea as an Athenian victory.^84 Apollo-
dorus’s chronological work was organized by Athenian archons and concentrated
heavily on the cultural life of the city.^85 In the lists of lucky and unlucky days dis-
cussed by Grafton and Swerdlow (1988), it is clear that the dates the historians and
antiquarians manipulate are from the Athenian calendar, or adapted to the Athen-
ian calendar; only the Athenian calendar could have had enough Panhellenic sway
to make this kind of game possible. It is, further, highly significant that when the
Romans get incorporated into this particular chronological framework, which kept
track of which days are lucky or unlucky for Greeks or barbarians, the Romans go
in the Greek column, not the barbarian one.^86
For the synchronizing historian, Athens, however important, is but one piece of
the jigsaw. The range of data needed to incorporate Rome into the time charts of
the Hellenistic Mediterranean world can be seen fully deployed by Polybius.^87
Polybius’s ability to cover the whole range of Greek time and to integrate its var-
ious components with Roman time is inextricably bound up with his vision of a
Mediterranean world that has been united synoptically for the first time by Roman
expansion.^88 The beginning of his work pins down his points of departure: first, the
140th Olympiad, “220 – 216 b.c.e.,” where his narrative proper will begin (1.3.1);
second, the 129th Olympiad, “264 – 260 b.c.e.,” the starting point of his scene-
setting first two books (1.5.1); third, the year “387/6 b.c.e.,” the earliest agreed-
upon era that can provide a starting point for the introductory sketch of Rome ’s
rise to dominion in Italy (1.6.1). The first and third of these dates are marked with
careful synchronisms, which bring under one view the spheres of audiences in
West Greece, Greece proper, and Italy. These synchronisms record events that
embody Polybius’s theme, that the whole world is now united under one power,
for these diverse regions are now part of one whole. He can claim that from the
140th Olympiad on, with the Hannibalic War, history is for the first time an
organic whole (1.3.4), “and the events of Italy and Libya have been interwoven
with those of Greece and Asia, all leading up to one end,” as iffinally answering
- Synchronizing Times II: West and East