and datings. The marginalization of this subject, sometimes related to a realor
disingenuous phobia of numbers, is what this present work intends to rectify.
Far more than a technicaldevice, the calendar was at the heart of ancient
society and culture, as an organizing principle of sociallife and as constitutive
of ideologies and world views. The calendar should not be confined, as it
sometimes is, to the history of science or to a marginalaspect of the history of
religions.Itfirmlybelongs to the core of socialhistory.
In this book, particular emphasis willbe placed on the politicalcharacter of
ancient calendars. This islargely because, as we shallsoon discover, most
ancient calendars were set and controlled by politicalrulers. The political
character of calendars has been noted by others before: thus another anthro-
pologist has remarked,‘calendars are eminentlypolitical: they only function in
response to communalagreement’(Drucker-Brown 1999 /2000: 9).Calendars
depend, indeed, on communalagreement, because unless they are reckoned by
allin the same way, they cannot effectively coordinate events and activities
within the socialgroup; and politicalrulers were those who had the power, in
Antiquity as in other periods, to enforce a common calendar upon society. But
another reason why politicalrulers assumed controlof the calendars was that
thelatter represented an effective instrument of socialcontrol. This is espe-
cially true in societies where the calendars wereflexible, and where rulers and
politicians were free to determine thelength of months and years: these
calendars gave them the means of regulating economic activity, state adminis-
tration, religious cult, and in some politicalsystems, their own tenures of
office—often to their personaladvantage. This explains why controlof the
calendar was a fundamentallypoliticalfunction in ancient society, either as the
privilege of politicalrulers, or for others, conversely, as means of asserting
politicalopposition and dissidence. The relationship between calendar and
politicalauthority is critical, therefore, to our understanding as much of
ancient calendars as of politicalforces in ancient society.^2
This politicaldimension, which much of this book willemphasize, may
seem alien to our modern experience of calendars. The Gregorian calendar,
which dominates today the western and most other parts of the world, does
play an important politicalrole in its contribution to the process of globaliza-
tion. But in terms of its structure, this calendar has been treated as immutable
ever since its institution in the sixteenth century; politicalrulers have never
dared to tamper with it or adjust it. The Gregorian calendar is indeed a simple,
abstract scheme that does not depend on any empiricaldata or adhoc
decisions; it isfixed and runs itself without any human input; politicalor
(^2) This is endorsed by Rüpke ( 1995 ), who concludes his study of the Roman calendar (62 5 )
with the observation that its history and development were driven by politicalmotivations rather
than by religious or other factors. For a similar observation on ancient Greece, see Loraux (2002)
171 – 90. For a modern anthropologicalperspective, see Gell( 1 992) 300– 1 3.
2 Calendars in Antiquity