plausibly assumed that the Athenian calendar persisted unchanged until the
fifth centuryCE.^133
The survival of flexible, politically controlled calendars deep into late
Antiquity was exceptional for the ancient world, as we shall later see (Chapter
5), and did not occur for want of any alternative. In the Classical and
Hellenistic periods, enough astronomical knowledge was available for the
cities to institute, if they had so wished, afixed lunar calendar (such as
the astronomical calendars discussed above); whilst in the Roman period,
the cities could easily have converted to the Julian calendar, as happened
everywhere else in the Roman East (see Chapter 5). The truth is, however,
that there was nothing intrinsically inadequate about theflexible, lunar Greek
calendars. These calendars did suffer from unpredictability, since the length of
months (whether hollow or full) and the intercalation of months were both
unknown in advance and subject, sometimes, to last-minute political deci-
sions. Calendar unpredictability is something modern scholars have difficulty
coming to terms with,^134 as it runs counter to modern expectations of what a
calendar should offer; yet there is no evidence that Athenians or other Greeks
ever complained about it or perceived it as problematic. Flexible, unpredict-
able calendars were normal in most societies through most of Antiquity, and
social, religious, and economic life could happily be organized accordingly.^135
Nevertheless, resistance in the Hellenistic period to the adoption of astro-
nomical calendars, and in the Roman period to the dominant trend of
adaptation to the Julian calendar, must have been to some extent a deliberate
choice. This choice may have been partly culturally motivated: the survival of
the Athenian calendar, in particular, has been attributed to a cultural conser-
vatism characteristic of the city that perceived itself, in the Roman period at
least, as the navel of Hellenistic civilization.^136 But inasmuch as the Greek
calendars were always under the control of archons (or equivalent city magis-
trates), one would expect the retention of the calendars to have been motivated
to the Ides of March would have been‘about’(ìܺØóôÆ) mid-Anthesterion (on assumptions of
this kind by ancient historians, see Grafton and Swerdlow 1988).
(^133) By the late 5th c., however, the Athenian calendar appears to have become assimilated to
the Julian calendar, as Proclus’death in 485CEis given in that year as 17 Mounychion, 17 April
(in Marinus of Neapolis,ProclusoronHappiness, 36: see Follet 1976: 362, Saffrey and Segonds
2001: 41, 176 n. 12). I have argued elsewhere that in 485CEa lunar month of Mounychion could
actually have begun on 1 April, so that it is just possible that the months of Mounychion and
April happened in that year to be conterminous, although the Athenian calendar was still lunar
(Stern 2001: 43 n. 179). However, Marinus’wording perhaps suggests that he considered (albeit
perhaps erroneously) both months, Athenian and Roman, to be assimilated and equivalent:
ìÅíeò ŒÆôa ìbí ÚŁÅíÆßïıò ÌïıíıåØHíïò ØÇ,ŒÆôa äbPøìÆßïıò Úðæغßïı ØÇ.
(^134) Asfinds expression e.g. inWalsh (1981); see above, n. 68.
(^135) The same applies to the empirical lunar calendar of the Mishnah, where the social and
economic consequences of calendar unpredictability are discussed though never presented as
problematic (Stern 2001: 228 136 – 32).
See the remarks of Follet (1976) 355, and below, beginning of Ch. 6.
Calendars of AncientGreece 63