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The Attic (Athenian) calendar seems to have been a combination of a rigid prytany calendar and a civil calendar and was subject to two kinds of variations normal irregularities arising from the fact that it was a lunar calendar and arbitrary tampering by the political authorities. |
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The calendar of the Greeks of ancient Athens is a problem for several reasons. |
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The authorities in charge of the civil calendar were allowed to make arbitrary changes to it, both adding and subtracting days at different times for various purposes. |
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The historical record, which is our only recourse to reconstructing a calendar subject to such alteration, is incomplete, and therefore inadequate for the task. |
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The prytany calendar is probably a more rigid structure, but the historical information that could confirm its structure completely is lacking. |
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9.10.1.1
The Civil Calendar |
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First, I'll consider the civil calendar. Much is not known, so the best place to start is with what is known. |
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The civil calendar is probably best considered as a religious calendar, since the dates of the calendar determine religious festivals and games. This calendar is essentially a lunisolar calendar, in which observation was used to establish the length of the months by new moons. The first day of each month was the Noumenia (new moon day). No annual religious festival is attested to have occurred on the Noumenia or to have included it, according to Mikalson (The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year). |
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There were 12 months in the year, with the following names: |
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The number of days in the month was 29 or 30, depending on the first observance of the new moon. The Athenians used a concept similar to the Jewish distinction between deficient and excessive to distinguish between months with 29 days and those with 30. A hollow month consisted of 29 days, and in this case, the 29th day was the henei kai neai, or end of month for our purposes. In a full month of 30 days, the 30th day was the henei kai neai. |
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