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"Worse still, when the gods come hungrily trudging home at night and find they must do without their dinner because you celebrate your festivals on the wrong day, it's the poor innocent Moon who bears the brunt of their heavenly grumbling." |
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One may conclude, therefore, that the civil calendar, in the sense of kat' archonta dates, frequently diverged from the astronomically correct calendar based on lunar observation. The danger inherent in allowing politicians complete freedom to alter the calendar was apparent even to the Greeks. Accordingly, the archons were required to balance the books calendrically at the end of the civil year in order to prevent them from arbitrarily extending the periods of office of themselves or their cronies. |
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9.10.1.2
The Prytany Calendar |
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The civil administration of Athens used a different calendar, which has been called the prytany calendar, as well as the conciliar, bouletic, or senatorial calendar. An understanding of the political organization of Athens is essential to an understanding of these names and the following discussion. |
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Decisions in Athenian government were made by a representative body, known as the Boule. The Boule consisted of a number of phylae of tribes, representing various groups in Athenian society. The number of phylae varied but was set at 10 during Aristotle's time. It was set to 12 and 13 at other times. |
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Specifically, for the period under discussion, the number of phylae was: |
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| Years | Phylae | | 341307 B.C. | 10 | | 306223 B.C. | 12 | | 222201 B.C. | 13 | | 200 B.C.124 A.D. | 12 |
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The calendar used for ordering the affairs of the Boule was organized into prytanies, with the number of prytanies in one year corresponding to the number of phylae. Dates given by this method are identified by the prytany number and the day number within the prytany. |
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There is very firm evidence for the period 341307 B.C., in the form of a clear statement from no less a source than Aristotle, that the number of prytanies in the contemporary prytany calendar was 10, the number of days in the first four prytanies was 36, and the number of days in the remaining six prytanies was 35, giving a common year of ((436) + (635)) = 354 days. |
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Aristotle does not mention the prytany structure of common years with lengths of 353 or 355 days, but the practice, mentioned above, of adjusting the length of the last month, Skirophorion, makes it likely that the adjustment was made in that month. |
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