perhaps also cultural integration of the eastern cities and provinces into the
Roman Empire.
But the adoption of the Julian calendar in Asia Minor and the Near East was
neither homogeneous nor straightforward. In most cases, the month-names
and several other features of the local calendars were tenaciously retained.
Although the calendars became adapted to the Julian, 365-day year (with a
leap year every four years), the internal structure of this year—the sequence
and length of the months, their dates, the date of the New Year—differed
considerably between provinces and cities. This tremendous diversity, and the
confusion that it might sometimes have caused, is evident for example in the
works of Josephus (latefirst centuryCE), where the frequently inconsistent
datings are clearly due to the variety of sources, and hence the variety of
calendars, that Josephus was using.^75
The diversity of calendars that emerged in this process in the Roman East is
enshrined, most distinctly, in a group of texts known ashemerologia. These
texts, preserved in early medieval manuscripts, consist of full-length tables
with the days of the Julian calendar in one column and the equivalent days in
more than a dozen different Roman Eastern calendars in the other columns.^76
The origin of thehemerologiais unknown, but they presumably go back to the
Roman period when the calendars were still in use (medieval scholars would
have had little incentive, and indeed limited resources, to compose them).
There is, in fact, late Roman evidence for suchhemerologia;^77 and afirst-
(^75) See Schürer (1973–87) i. 596–9, Stern (2001) 34–8. My statement there that‘Macedonian
calendars differed far more from each other in thefirst century [CE] than in the period when they
were still lunar, and when the months would have begun, approximately, on the same days’(ibid.
38) is probably incorrect, inasmuch as even when they were still lunar, different patterns of
intercalation led to differences of one or several months between the various post-Seleucid
calendars, as we have seen above.
(^76) The most important manuscripts from Florence, Leiden, and the Vatican, were published
in a seminal work by Kubitschek (1915). See Samuel (1972) 171–3, Meimaris (1992) 35–6.
(^77) The earlier manuscripts (Florence and Leiden) are dated by Kubitschek (1915) 58–70 to the
9th c., but they are clearly copies of earlier works. The existence and availability ofhemerologia
already in the late Roman period are implicit in Epiphanius’ability in the 370sCEto supply the
dates of Jesus’birth and baptism in a wide range of calendars (Egyptian, Syrian, Cypriot,
Paphian, Arabian, etc.:Panarion51. 24,Williams 1987–94: ii. 55), for which he (or his source)
is likely to have used ahemerologion(Kubitschek 1915: 73–5). A number of ancient Greek
ephemerides include more than one calendar in separate columns: most common are columns
for the Julian and Egyptian calendars (A. Jones 1999b: no. 4175, dated 24BCE); some have a third
column for an astronomical lunar calendar (designated askata selenen: ibid. no. 4183; pap.
Graec. Vindob. 29730b in A. Jones 1994: 125–6; pap. Mich. inv. 1454 in Curtis and Robbins
1935, dated 467CE); and from the 5th c.CEand later, a fourth column is sometimes added for a
Julian calendar with days of the month counted not in the Roman style but serially from the
beginning of the month (pap. Graec. Vindob. 29730 in Gerstinger and Neugebauer 1962, redated
to 489CEby A. Jones 1994: 121–5). It is unclear whether this fourth column should be identified
with a civic/provincial calendar such as that of Antioch or Syria (which was modelled on the
Julian calendar but with a serial count of days), as suggested by Gerstinger and Neugebauer (see
Jones 1999b: i. 13); it could simply be an alternative representation of the Julian calendar, which
260 Calendars in Antiquity