by primarilypoliticalfactors. The power of city magistrates to manipulate the
calendar and tamper with it was clearly to their political advantage, through
the Classical and Hellenistic periods and even, to some extent, under Roman
rule. In all these periods, control of the calendar was to the city magistrates not
only a personal privilege and a mark of political prominence within the city
(or, if applicable,‘city state’), but also, in terms of government, an effective
instrument of social organization and social control. The ruling classes had no
interest in abolishing this system, and it is this, above all, that explains the
longevity of ancient Greek calendars in Antiquity.
Calendar tampering: political and other motivationsTo understand further the political advantages of the Greek calendar system, it
mustfirst be stressed that calendar tampering did not always or necessarily
serve the personal, selfish interests of unscrupulous individuals. In some cases,
no doubt, the calendar would have been tampered with for the sole advantage
of political rulers: for example at Sparta in 242BCE, when the ephor Agesilaus
is said to have intercalated a thirteenth month before it was due, and so to have
exacted taxes for it (Plutarch,Agis and Cleomenes, 16). But in many cases,
calendar tampering would have served the interests of the city or state as a
whole.
These interests could often be related to war.^137 According to Thucydides
(5. 54), during their campaign against Epidauros in 419BCEthe Argives
postponed their holy month of Karneios by intercalating some days after the
27th of the preceding month. Their purpose was clearly to avoidfighting
during the holy month.^138 Xenophon (Hell.4. 7. 2) reports that in 388BCE,
likewise, the Argives advanced the holy month so as to create an excuse not to
fight together with Sparta (Sparta rejected the excuse as contrived). According
to Plutarch (Alexander25), towards the end of the siege of Tyre in 332BCEan
omen was given that the city would be captured in the same month; as it was
the last day of the month,^139 Alexander ordered that this day be counted
instead as the 28th. The end of the story, however, is that having thus regained
confidence, the Macedonian army attacked and took the city on that very same
day. Plutarch seems to be suggesting that Alexander’s calendar change turned
(^137) See further Dunn (1998) 226–7.
(^138) So A. Andrewes in Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover (1945–81) iv. 75, although this
explanation is not explicit in Thucydides, as pointed out by Pritchett (2001) 25. Thucydides
does make plain in this passage that the Dorians regarded the month of Karneios as holy, which
is why, in anticipation of it, the Dorian allies of Epidauros did not come to its rescue.
(^139) Triakas; it is not clear, in this case, whether this day was the 29th or the 30th (see above,
n. 68).
64 Calendars in Antiquity