itself.^145 Dunn notes a high incidence, in the epigraphic record, of intercala-
tion of days at the ends of months—including intercalation of an extra last day
of the month (henakai nea embolimos). This suggests last-minute adjustments
to ensure that the new month would begin at the right time, i.e. at thefirst
appearance of the new moon (Dunn 1998: 221–2). Finally, it been suggested
that intercalations were sometimes artificially made so as to ensure the
coincidence of certain dates with specific agricultural seasons.^146 But whatever
the reasons for interfering with the calendar—whether related to war and
foreign relations, to religious cults, to economic factors, or even to calendar
regulation itself—the calendar was always under political control, and in this
respect, calendar tampering was primarily apoliticalprocess.^147
It would be futile to ask whether calendar tampering was more often used
by political actors for personal interest or for the public good. Not only is the
evidence lacking for such a quantitative assessment, but also the distinction
between personal and public interest, in the complex arena of politics and civic
social life, was never so straightforward. The subtext of this question—that in
the context of calendar tampering, personal interest would have been illegiti-
mate and the public good legitimate—is also problematic. In ancient Greek
society, personal ambition was considered a legitimate motivation, if only
because it led indirectly to the public good; and conversely, the‘public good’
ultimately served the personal interests of the individuals who promoted it.
Modern historians, however, have commonly addressed the question of legiti-
macy of calendar tampering in ancient Greece on the basis of their own
ideological paradigms. A‘left-wing’historian would thus argue that the
public-minded justifications for tampering with the calendar were really ex-
cuses for powerful aristocrats—or demagogues—to manipulate the calendar
to their own advantage; whereas a conservative, ‘right-wing’ historian
would argue, in reverse, that calendar tampering was fundamentally for
the public good, and instances of illegitimate tampering for personal gain
were only exceptional anomalies.^148 Yet the polarity between‘legitimate’and
(^145) This may be implicit in the explanation that Plutarch (Conviv.9. 6) gives for the
permanent suppression of 2 Boedromion in the Athenian calendar, namely that it was‘not to
suit the moon, but because that is the day on which the gods are believed to have had their
territorial dispute’(see Loraux 2002: 184–8).‘Not to suit the moon’(ïP ðæeò ôcí óåºÞíÅí)
suggests that adjustment to the moon was otherwise the normal reason for the suppression of
days. Cicero (II In Verrem2. 129, written in the early 60sBCE) claims that the Sicilians‘and other
Greeks’are accustomed to suppress or add only one or two days to the month, and only for the
purpose of regulating the calendar. However, he is probably exaggerating the regularity of the
Sicilian and Greek calendars in order to contrast it with the suppression of one and a half months
which Verres (governor of Sicily in the late 70sCE) arbitrarily carried out in one particular year.
(^146) Pritchett (2001) 30, but this remains entirely speculative.
(^147) See Loraux (2002) 171–90, esp. 186.
(^148) Dunn (1998) is a good example of the latter paradigm, which for some reason tends to be
more dominant.
66 Calendars in Antiquity