the city magistrates to determine whether to intercalate a month in the lunar
calendar year.^119
If true, this might explain the comment of Columella (first centuryCE) that
the‘calendars’—in Latinfastus, which may be taken here to mean thepara-
pegmata—of Eudoxus, Meton, and other ancient astronomers were‘adapted’
to the public festivals. The context of this passage is the determination of the
dates of solstices and equinoxes, which suggests perhaps that it is specifically
the solstice dates inparapegmatathat were‘adapted’, whatever this exactly
means, to the civil calendars.^120 However, it is equally possible that the‘public
festivals’referred to here by Columella are not Greek but Roman, which were
dated, in his period, according to the Julian calendar, which was solar. If
Columella only means, effectively, that the Julian calendar assumed equinox
and solstice dates that conformed to those of theparapegmata, his comment
would be of trivial significance.
- THEKATA THEONCALENDAR
The phrasekata theon(‘according to the goddess’, i.e. the moon) or alterna-
tivelykata selenen(‘according to the moon’) is used to indicate true lunar
dates, i.e. of a calendar conforming strictly to the monthly cycle of the moon.
Kata theonorselenendates are attested mostly in second-centuryBCEinscrip-
tions, particularly in Attica (the district of which Athens was the main city).
Thefirst attestation of this phrase is a much earlier passage of Thucydides
(2. 28. 1,fifth centuryBCE), according to which a solar eclipse occurred at a
noumenia(first of the month)‘according to the moon’(kata selenen). But this
passage does not imply, as yet, the use ofkata theonorselenendates. The
function of the phrase in this passage is only to specify that thisnoumeniawas
not calendrical, i.e. thefirst day of a calendar month, but purely astronomical
and lunar, i.e. the day when the new moonfirst appeared.^121
(^119) Hannah (2005) 61–2. The Geminusparapegmatext (see above and n. 116) begins
explicitly at the summer solstice—a convention that may be related to the beginning of the
Athenian year (see above and n. 57). Hannah argues further (2005: 59–70) that the availability
and use ofparapegmatawould have generated an awareness, among the Greeks, of the solar year
(since solar and sidereal year are almost identical in length). However, there is no evidence that a
solar calendar was ever suggested as an alternative to the lunar civil calendars (see further above,
n. 43).
(^120) Columella,Agri.9. 14. 12 (Eudoxi et Metonis antiquorumque fastus astrologorumquisunt
aptati publicis sacrificiis); see Hannah 2005: 62. The exact meaning ofaptatiis a little unclear: one
would have expected the reverse, i.e. that public festivals were adapted to theparapegmataof
Eudoxus and Meton.
(^121) As proposed, in essence, by Bickerman (1968) 28 (by‘New Moon’Bickerman actually
means‘new moon day’—paceBowen and Goldstein 1994: 703) and Bowen and Goldstein (1994)
Calendars of AncientGreece 59