suggest that the calendar month could be assumed to conform, to some
degree, to the phases of the moon. In a scene set in the early hours of the
morning, the character Strepsiades mentions seeing the moon in its‘twenties’
and gets worried about his debts, which—we know from what follows—were
due at the end of the calendar month (Clouds 16 – 18; see Hannah 2005: 50). It
is not completely clear, however, that Strepsiades means literally the moon,
which he has seen in the early morning sky and which he treats as indicative
that the end of the calendar month is approaching, as opposed to meaning
‘moon’metonymically in the sense of‘month’.^48 Even if he literally means the
moon, it is not clear how precisely its size would have been expected to
indicate the current calendar date.^49
Firmer evidence of conformity to the lunar month belongs to the Hellenistic
and Roman periods (from the third centuryBCE). Literary sources that describe
the Greek month beginning at the new moon (see above), implying that the
calendar was lunar and regular (even if the notion of‘new moon’was not
precisely defined, as discussed above), are not earlier than the third century
BCE.^50 There is also some epigraphic evidence of calendar regularity, but again,
relatively late (mostly from the second centuryBCE). An inscription from about
166 BCEinforms us that in that year, the 26th of the eleventh month at Athens
corresponded to the 26th of the same month at Ambrakia, and to the 27th of
the same month at Akarnia; thus no discrepancy between the former, and only
a one-day discrepancy between the former and the latter. This agreement
between calendars cannot be fortuitous; it must certainly be attributed to these
calendars’being based,a priori, on a common lunar criterion such asfirst
visibility of the new moon.^51 Similarly, a treaty of 196BCEwhich is dated 16
Pyanopsion according to the Milesians and 15 Hagneon according to the
Magnesians, would suggest that both calendars were based on visibility of
the new moon;^52 and the same can be inferred, again, from a treaty of 120 or
kalendaeandnonaecould be interpreted by some as survivals from an archaic lunar calendar
(see Ch. 4 n. 137), yet they were used in a calendar that already in the Republican period had long
shed its lunar features.
(^48) It should be noted that the concept of‘twenties’is more appropriate to the calendar month
(which in Greek calendars was normally divided into three periods of 10 days, the last of which
would thus be‘20s’) than to the moon or lunar month (which is more naturally divided into 4
phases). The passage reads: 49 ›æHí ¼ªïıóÆí ôcí óåºÞíÅí åNŒÜäÆò.
Strepsiades’countdown of days inClouds 1131 – 4 is discussed below.
(^50) Aratus,Phaenomena 733 – 9; but as discussed above, even this is moot. The earliest
unambiguous statement that the month begins at the new moon is from the 1st c.BCE(Geminus:
see above, n. 4).
(^51) Pritchett (1999) 83, (2001) 91. The difference in longitude between Athens and Akarnia,
about 3, would not have been sufficient in this case to affect the dates of visibility of the new
moon. However, the one-day discrepancy may still have been due to non-political factors, e.g.
bad weather.
(^52) Dittenberger (1915–24) ii. 108–11 no. 588 (referred to in Bickerman 1968: 33). In this case,
the one-day discrepancy can be related to new moon visibility: Miletus, on the western coast of
Calendars of AncientGreece 37