Calendar of the ancient Greeks

Years:
Star	BC.e.(-)	Evening	Morning	Evening	Morning
and n.	Sunset	Sunrise	Sunrise	Sunset
Alcyone	-500	March 30	May 15	September 20	October 29
( Pleiades)	+300	April 11	May 26	October 3	November 11
Betelgeuse	-500	April 25		June 23 November 24 November 15
( α Orionis)
+300	May 6	July 1	December 4	November 26
Sirius
-500		April 27 July 22 December 27		November 17
( α B. Psa)
+300	May 5	July 29	January 4	November 26
Arcturus
-500	October 27	13 september	May 29
( α Volopasa)
+300	November 2	September 26	5 march	June 2
Vega
-500	January 17	November	14th of April	August 10
( α Lira)
+300	January 23	November 12	April 21	August 16
Speaker	-500
August 15	September 23	March 2	March 21
( α Virgo)
+300	August 27	6 October	14 march	2 April

At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.e. Greece, consisting of separate city-states( policies), was under the cultural influence of many countries of the East. The ancient Greeks colonized the neighboring islands and coasts from Asia Minor to Southern Italy and even the northern shores of the Black Sea. And for those who sailed and those engaged in agriculture, some knowledge was needed, a calendar was needed,

For the timely conduct of agricultural work, the ancient Greeks coordinated their lives with the change of seasons, with the apparent annual movement of the Sun across the sky. That is why in the poems of Homer( VIII century BC) it is attested that the ancient Greeks had an idea of ​​the solar year, although. .. there is no evidence that they used solar calendars at that time. It can only be asserted that already somewhere in the IX century. BC.e.the ancient Greeks knew how in the rhythm with the change of seasons the view of the starry sky changes. This yearly recurring change in the visibility of individual groups of stars and constellations was used in everyday life as a kind of solar calendar.

This is confirmed by the advice that the poet Hesiod( VIII century BC) gave to rural workers:

It is clear that the beginning of specific field works with a view of the starry sky is clearly compared here. In particular, the sickle should be taken during the first morning( heliacic) sunrise of the Pleiades( for the times of Hesiod in the latitude of Greece it is about May 12, according to the modern calendar), when the Pleiades come dawn at dawn( early November), it is time to plow. At the end of February, when Arcturus' star rises from the sea in the evening, it is necessary to prune the vines, etc.

Moments of morning and evening sunrises and visits of several of the most remarkable stars, at the latitude of Athens in 501 BC.e.and 300 g.e.are given in Table.

Table. The rise and fall of the "calendar" stars at the latitude of Athens according to the Gregorian calendar

It is easy to see that due to precession the conditions of visibility of specific stars and their groups are constantly changing. Therefore, in our time, Hesiod's advice can no longer be used. ..

"... In days and months - with the moon"

As noted by the ancient Greek scholar I in.before.n.e. Gemin in his "Elements of Astronomy", the Greeks were supposed to make sacrifices to their gods according to the traditions of their ancestors, and therefore "they must keep in years agreement with the Sun, and in days and months - with the Moon."And in fact, in their business and social life, the Greeks used luni-solar calendars. The names of the months of these calendars usually came from the names of the festivals celebrated in the corresponding month. So, the Athenians in the first month of their calendar solemnly sacrificed a hundred bulls - "hecatomb", and therefore the month was called Hecatomveon. In the first number, civil servants joined in their posts, on the 12th day there were holidays dedicated to the god Chronos, who personified time. On the seventh day of the third month, Voidromion, a holiday was celebrated in honor of Apollo Voidromea - "helping in battle with a cry", and the day before the Greeks commemorated the dead. In the month of Pianepsy on the 7th, the Greeks celebrated the feast of the grapes, 10-14th - a women's holiday, on the 28th in each fourth year were accompanied by a torchlight procession of Hephaestus - celebrations in honor of Hephaestus - the god of fire and blacksmith's craft, the next twoday and were the holidays of blacksmiths. On the eighth month - Anfestirion - there was a holiday of the beginning of the spill of a new wine( "small Dionysia"), corresponding to the same event "the feast of flowers" was called Anfestirii. In the month of Hamilion, marriages took place.

The Athenian and Macedonian lunisolar calendars were most famous. The first of these, in particular, was used by Greek astronomers, the second was widely used in the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Here is an approximate correspondence of the months of Athenian( left), Macedonian and our calendars:

Gekatomveon	Loyos	July
Metagitnion	Gorpeos	August
Voidromion	Gipervereteos	September
Pianepsion	Dios	October
Memaktirion	Apelleos	November
Posideon	Avdineos	December
Gamilion	Perityos	January
Anfestirion	Distros	February
Elafivolion	Xandikos	March
Munichion	Artemisios	April
Fargilion	Deyios	May
Skirforion	Panemos	June

According to some reports, the original ancient Greeks began their year around the winter solstice. Then its beginning was moved to the summer solstice, since at that time meetings usually took place, at which officials were elected.

The days of the ancient Greeks began with the sunset and consisted of the night and the day following it. The days of the month were divided into three decades( this division already occurs in Hesiod).The first 10 days were simply considered - from the first to the tenth, the next nine were called "first", "second", etc. with the addition of the words "after ten", the remaining days were counted in reverse order: "the ninth from the end of the month", "the eighthfrom the end of the month ", etc. The 30th day was called" old and new, "and the previous 29th was" anticipatory ";in a month consisting of 29 days, he was excluded from the account.

The title of the 30th day has a deep meaning. To them, the Greeks in the counting of the days seemed to "detach" from the observations: the next day they considered the 1st date of the new calendar month, whether the crescent moon is visible in the sky or not( in autumn it can be seen only on the third day after the conjunction).

It is noteworthy that the ancient Greeks on every day of the month honored one or several gods, to whom this day was dedicated. In Athens, in particular, the first and last day of each month was dedicated to Hecate - the goddess, at first considered the patroness of human affairs, later - the goddess of ghosts, nightmares, the ruler of the shadows in the underworld, and she was sometimes identified with the moon goddess Selene. The first day of the month was also dedicated to Apollo and Hermes, the 3rd, 13th and 23rd days to Athena. The last three days of each month were considered unhappy, they were dedicated to the dead, as well as to the underground gods.

Gemin also finds some information on the structure of the ancient Greek lunisolar calendars: "For business and public life, the duration of the monthly period was rounded to 291/2 days, so that two months were 59 days."The calendar year consisted of 12 months. To coordinate the duration of the civil year with the solar, according to Gemin, "the ancients inserted an additional month( in Athens they were usually winter Posideon) every year."This means that the Greeks at that time used triethidine-the most primitive two-year lunar cycle. How long this went on, as the Greeks brought their lunar calendar into agreement with the solar calendar, is unknown.

Another certificate of ancient Greek calendars comes from Herodotus( 484-425 BC): "The Greeks inserted a month in every second or third year for the sake of( conformity) of the seasons."Apparently, it already speaks about the use of the 8-year cycle by the Greeks - octaetridium, which in Greece was allegedly introduced by the poet and political figure Solon( 640-560 BC) in 593 BC.e.

In fact, the information about the reform carried out at that time is very contradictory. Plutarch( 46-126) on Solon says this: "Having noticed the inequality of the month and the fact that the motion of the moon does not agree with the sunset or sunrise, but often on the same day, the Moon is overtaking the Sun and moving away from it,call this day "old and new," believing that part of this day before joining( the Moon with the Sun) belongs to the expiring month, the rest of the part beginning. "

The writer Diogenes Laertius( 1st half of the 3rd century BC) confined himself to the assertion that Solon ordered the Athenians to count the days on the Moon. According to the philosopher Proclus( 410-485), before Solon, the Greeks generally did not know that the lunar months are not always in 30 days.

Apparently, Solon coordinated the calendar with the moon for the insertion of additional days, and perhaps not for the Sun, throwing out a false month to bring the beginning of the lunar year to the summer solstice. It is not excluded, of course, that he actually introduced octaetheid. Embolism years were the 1st and 3rd years of the odd and second year of the even Olympiad.

It would seem that when observing the phases of the same moon, the same neoenia, the townspeople of different policies would have to start counting the days in the months from the same days( another thing that the months themselves could be called differently).But this just was not. Partly, apparently, because the octaetherid system was not universally accepted then, and even "worked" it is still bad. As a result, as Plutarch noted, there was no agreement between the individual calendars in the count of days in months. Let us confine ourselves to just one example. Describing one of the events of the war of 431-421 gg. BC.e., the disciple of Aristotle Aristoxenus( however, more than a hundred years later) wrote that at that time "the tenth day of the month for the Corinthians corresponded to the fifth day for the Athenians and the eighth for some other calendar."Apparently, this particular day corresponded to the 7th or 8th day of the Moon, but in Athens the calendar for two or three days lagged behind the phase change of the Moon, whereas in Corinth it was ahead of it. ..

One can therefore understand the huge enthusiasm with whichin 432 BC.e. During the Olympic Games, the discovery of the astronomer Meton was met. Meton deduced the relationship between the tropical year and the synodic month, and also calculated and compared on special tables the change in annual sunrises and sunset of stars with a change in the phases of the moon in the 19-year cycle. These tables were carved on stone slabs and installed on public squares for public viewing. Such a stone calendar was called the parapegma.

Praise parapegma

The very word "parapegma" means "attach", "stick."But what relation does it have to the calendars, it was possible to establish only in 1902, when the excavations of the theater in Miletus( the former Greek colony on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor) were found fragments of such a parapegma. One of its fragments is shown in Fig.

Fig. Fragment of the ancient Greek paraplegic calendar

Here you can see the inscriptions located on the lines to the left of which, and also between them there is a row of holes, all of them on the right column 30. To better understand the principle of this calendar, we number all the holes, putting numbers before the lineson the monument there are none).The inscriptions say about the following:

Analysis of these inscriptions shows that it is a matter of changing the conditions of visibility of sunrise and sunset of stars in Greece during the passage of the Sun through the constellation of Aquarius. The left part of the table spoke, obviously, about similar phenomena occurring thirty days earlier. We can assume that there were only six such tables and each one was "scheduled" for 61 days. The duration of one year in the methonic cycle is an average of 6940: 19 = 365.26 days. During this time, Meton believed, the Sun passes through 12 zodiacal constellations, lingering in each of them by 365.26: 12 = 30.4 days.

So, on parapegma, a civil lunisolar calendar was compared with changes in the type of the starry sky during the solar year and with the corresponding change in the seasons. We will try to follow "Meton" with the fragment of the parapegma that we have at our disposal. Suppose that in the year that we take as the initial one( let's call it conditionally the first year of the cycle), a new moon( or neomenia) took place at the moment when the "Swan completely in the evening dawn", corresponding to the hole 29. Insert into this hole a pin withthe number 1, the next hole( 30) - with the number 2, etc. This will be the calendar numbers of the lunar month of the year. Similarly, after 29 and 30 days, the same pins will be installed on the other tables( including the left side of the paraplegm and the upper part of the right side).Thus, the change in the form of the starry sky( not so clearly conspicuous!) Will be compared with a well-marked phenomenon-the phase change of the moon. Somewhere on one of the tables it will be fixed, in which number and which of the lunar month "Morning Pleiades rise", announcing the harvest time. ..

After 12 lunar months, the same new moon will come 11 days earlier. Therefore, in the next, second year of the 19-year cycle, the same month will begin when "The Aquarius averages rise" - hole 18( = 29-11).Therefore, all the pins with the days numbers must be moved in the holes 11 positions back. On the third year of the cycle, the beginning of the month moves for another 11 days back( on this fragment of the parapegma it will be on the hole 18-11 = 7).Accordingly, we rearrange all the pins with the days numbers. During these two years, the beginning of the month has shifted back to 11 11 = 22 days. Therefore, in the third year, the insertion of the 13th month will be made. As a result, the pin with the beginning of the month in the fourth year will move by 30-11 = 19 days in advance - into the hole 7 + 19 = 26. In general, the hole numbers of this paraplegm fragment corresponding to the beginning of the lunar month in the subsequent years of the 19-year lunar cycle can be written

1st	year	- 29	8th	year - 12	15th	year - 25
2nd	»	- 18	9th	» - 1	The 16th	»- 14
3rd	»	- 7	10th	»- 20	17th	» - 3
4th	»	-26	11th	» - 9	18th	»-21
5th	- 15	12th	» - 28	19th	»- 10
6th	»	- 4	13th	»- 17	1	»-29
7th	»	-23	14th	»- 6	..	. .......

After 19 years, the cycle is completely repeated. It is interesting here the following. On the paraplegm fragment there are holes corresponding to 30 days. Meanwhile, as can be seen from the table, if the Meton cycle were perfectly accurate, a new moon can only occur in 19 of them. These days you can somehow highlight, for example, gilding the corresponding holes and writing about each of them with gold numerals the year number in the 19-year cycle in which from this hole( corresponding to the specific position of the stars in the sky!) Is the countdown of the lunar month. If this is done, then it's okay that during the transportation of the parapegm, the pins fell out of the hole or the inquisitive boys joked for the night, rearranged them. Remembering the number of the year in the 19-year cycle, we will immediately find the places( holes) for the first numbers of the months, after which it is not difficult to establish all the others.