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Dionysiac festival and further prescribes that the civil calendars may be adjusted by intercalation of up to three days. This latter prescription apparently is intended to provide a kind of explicit fudge factor to allow for difficulties in arranging for the troupe to appear at the proper city at the proper time. |
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Plutarch provides an example of the degree to which the politicians were permitted to abuse the calendar. In the ekklesia, in 302 B.C., "on motion of Stratocles, it was voted to call the current month, which was Munychion, Anthesterion, and so to regard it, and the lesser rites at Agra were performed for Demetrius; after which Munychion was again changed and became Boedromion instead of Anthesterion, Demetrius received the remaining rites of initiation. . . ." |
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Compared to these calendric peregrinations, the Mad Hatter's watch (Carroll, p. 96) is the very apotheosis of logical time keeping. It is small wonder that, in the face of this sort of asinine populism (if I may be permitted a tautology), Greek astronomers despaired of their own calendar and adopted the Egyptian for their work. |
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If the archons were guided by rules or other considerations that governed a return to the correct calendar, they are unknown. There must have been some pressure to realign the two calendars on a monthly basis, since different days of the month were devoted to different deities. For example, day 2 was the day of agathos daimon, day 3 was Athena's birthday, day 4 was dedicated to three deities (Herakles, Hermes, and Aphrodite) and probably Eros, day 6 was Artemis' birthday, day 7 was Apollo's birthday, and day 8 was sacred to Poseidon and Theseus. |
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The archons could continue to juggle the numbers of the days in an arbitrary way to satisfy the religious requirements within a given month, but the actual astronomical new moon would force a noumenia to be declared within one or two days of its occurrence and thus begin another month cycle. The archons either ignored the actual new moon and carried the extra days from one month to the next, or they were compelled to drop large numbers of days at the ends of some months. |
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The divergence between kat' archonta and kata theon dates is recorded as 13 and even 20 in some cases, so this would be a significant adjustment if it were accomplished within one month. Pritchett and Neugebauer (p. 40) indicate a case of an intercalary year in which two or three extra days were intercalated in the first half of the year and not subtracted until the end of Skirophorion, and another case (p. 41) in which one or two days were subtracted from Skirophorion in an intercalary year to compensate for intercalary days but do not indicate when the days were intercalated. These examples are not a complete answer, but do suggest that intercalary days were carried over several months. |
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That this state of affairs did exist and was a source of confusion is suggested by several sources, including the well-known lines from Aristophanes' play. The Clouds (pp. 5960), which read: "Nonetheless, you brusquely refuse to devise an Accurate Lunar Calendar, and your month is a consequent chaos, a masterpiece of temporal confusion. |
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