Talk:Attic calendar

I have seen scholarly reference books that claimed the Attic calendar started at many times (first full moon after summer solstice seems popular). I can't be entirely sure unless I see some primary sources, but starting close to the autumnal equinox seems to fit best so far. Conrad Leviston 09:41, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't the summer solstice be more locical? After all, that's where the extra month is fitted in. Aliter 11:17, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary?
The reference on this is a rather vague "Webster's 1913 Dictionary". Can anyone be more specific? By that date, there was more than one dictionary using the name "Webster". -- Jmabel 02:08, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Olympiad reckoning
Now that the Olympiad article distinguishes between the ancient Olympiads and the Olympiads of the Modern era, it appears as a more appropriate place to treat the Olympiad reckoning. That is not unique to Athens, after all, nor was it tied very closely to the calendar. I don't think it even was in official use for very long. Are there other points of view? (I've already put up a version there. Please compare, as there are differences.) Aliter 14:24, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To Do list from article
I'm moving this out of the body of the article and putting it here:

add Greek spelling Binabik80 17:50, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * (unused to-do list removed) –Drilnoth (T • C) 16:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Tolkien is irrelevant
Much as I love J.R.R. Tolkien, this is irrelevant here: There is also a land in Middle-earth called Thargelion.--08:26, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Some sources
This article as it stands bears no relation to the account of festival calendars in Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985, pp 225ff. Burkert gives as reference sources
 * W.K. Pritchett and O. Neugebauer, The Calendars of Athens'' 1947
 * B.D. Merrit, The Athenian Year, 1961
 * J.D. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year, 1975.

I would edit if I were competent, but I won't apply one of those "contested" labels. This entry needs rethinking from the ground up. --Wetman 09:09, 10 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Wetman, can you at least summarize what you think is wrong? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:03, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistency between "Olympiad" and "Attic Calendar" articles
The Attic Calendar article specifies that the intervening years belong to the Olympiad of the following games, while the Olympiad article specifies that they belong to that of the preceding games. Also, the Attic calendar article gives the first year of an Olympiad as being the year following the games, while the Olympiad article give the first year as the year of the games. The issue is critical to converting Greek dates to B.C. dates. Aftermath 01:08, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

The first Olympiad begins in 776 BC as Olympiad 1, year one, then Ol. 1,2; Ol. 1,3; Ol. 1,4; Ol. 2,1 etc (that not so appealing comma seems the standard punctuation in modern notation). Flounderer 11:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

rewrite
I'm planning to do a rewrite of this entry. Please let me know if anyone objects to this. Flounderer 06:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Just so long as you don't lose the information that is here. It's hardly a masterpiece of prose. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I promise there will be more rather than less information. But I just deleted the calculations of olympiads as it was plain wrong: the olympiad article has it the right way round. Anyway, olympiads belong in the entry only to show what the attic calendar wasn't, a system for producing panhellenically comprehensible dates. Flounderer 12:35, 4 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Can we move that sentence at the bottom about Middle-Earth to another page? Say to a disambiguation page Thargelion? The first thing I saw when I looked at this page was that odd factoid sitting at the bottom, looking as if either an act of vandalism or a weird, goof-ball contribution; only later did I notice that Thargelion was also the name of a month in the Attic calendar. -- llywrch 23:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's pointless here and should go. Can you lead it away? Flounderer 00:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I should have researched things a little further before making that comment: there is already an article Thargelion that does just this. Deleted this annoying bit anyway. -- llywrch 21:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

old state of entry
Here is what there was. Some bits of stray info below didn't make it over. I've been a bit longwinded, but have followed the line that an ancient calendar is more a Large Peculiar Cultural Object than something in need of a Quick Handy Reference. Flounderer 13:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The Attic calendar, the calendar used in Ancient Athens, was influential among the Hellenic calendars. It is a lunisolar calendar, combining elements of solar calendars and lunar calendars. Each year began after the summer solstice and was divided into 12 months, each beginning with the new moon.


 * 1) Boedromion, the "cattle drive"
 * 2) Pyanepsion
 * 3) Maimakterion
 * 4) Poseideon, dedicated to Poseidon
 * 5) Gamelion (could start anywhere from late December to mid January)
 * 6) Anthesterion
 * 7) Elaphebolion
 * 8) Mounykhion
 * 9) Thargelion (Greek &#920;&#945;&#961;&#947;&#942;&#955;&#953;&#969;&#957;) (overlaps May and June of the modern Gregorian Calendar)
 * 10) Skirophorion
 * 11) Hekatombaion (also see Hecatomb)
 * 12) Metageitnion

The first month of Boedromion contained the Eleusinian Mysteries, which lasted from the 15th to 21st days of that month.

Gamelion was dedicated to the sacred marriage of Hera and Zeus. The Lenaia festival was held in honour of Dionysus from the 12th to the 15th of this month, and bears some relation to the modern St. Valentine's Day.

An intercalary month was used to keep a fixed relation to the seasons. These months, called "the second Poseideon," were at first inserted in an inexact way, but later more systematically in years 3, 5, 8, 11, 13, 16, 19 of the Metonic cycle.

Dates were reckoned by Olympiads, which were equal to four years. This provides one of the few reckonings of dates in classical times independent of the reigns of particular rulers.

The Roman emperor Justinian I suppressed the Olympic Games (and other pagan institutions) in 529; perhaps most notably, he placed teaching at the Academy of Plato under the control of what was, by that time, a specifically Christian state. Thus, the 327th Olympiad is the last time this system of naming years would have been used.

The first Olympiad dates from 776 BC.

Dating of months
Many web sources give different dates for the months. For example, Harper's Dictionary of Clasical Antiquity says Elaphebolion is: "The ninth month of the Attic year, answering to the last of March and the early part of April". Wikipedia has it a month earlier. Alpheus (talk) 20:35, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Earlier/later 10th
This article describes the decision to shorten the month occurring just before the new moon. It strikes me that the same effect could be achieved by omitting the "later 10th day of the waning moon" and having only one. Can someone weigh in on whether this in fact was the ancestral state of affairs, with some later period then choosing to rely on last-minute measurements above those of the full moon? Wnt (talk) 15:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Meaning of the month names
Any Greek scholars want to give us laymen a translation of the meanings of the various month names? We know, for example, that for the Roman calendar and its successors, "October" refered to the fact that it was orginally the 8th month. But what does, "Boedromion," for example, mean?

1.)	Hekatombaion = from Hecatombe (Hekaton, Bous) = an offering of a hundred oxen. 2.)	Metageitnion  = from meta and geiton = with/amongst neighbours, so called because people flitted and changed their neighbours. 3.)	Boedromion = from boedromia (boe, dromos), the month celebrating the boedromia games, the celebratory games in memory of Theseus’ giving of succour against the Amazons, lit. to run for a cry of aid, to haste to help. 4.)	Pyanepsion = from pyanos (bean) and epsein (to cook), custom of cooking beans at the festival in honour of Apollo. 5.)	Maimakterion = from the verb maimasso = I am boisterous/stormy, maimassein = to be boisterous and stormy, as an epithet of Zeus Maimaktes and whose festival was held in this month. 6.)	Poseideon = month dedicated to the god Poseidon. 7.)	Gamelion = from gamos (wedding), the wedding month, that which belongs to weddings as it was fashionable to get married during this time. 8.)	Anthesterion = from anthe (flowers), month that housed the anthesteria the feast of flowers, a three day festival in honour of Dionysus. 9.)	Elaphebolion = from elaphos (deer) and ballein (to shoot) = the month of shooting deer. 10.)	 Mounychion = from the festival of Mounychian Artemis, presumably from the harbour and hill Mounychia at Athens between Phaleron (or its later Latin name adopted by the Romans, Phalerum) and Peiraieus. 11.)	 Thargelion = from Thargelia a festival in honour of Artemis and Apollo. I can’t find much information on the etymology of this month.  12.)	 Skirophorion = from skiron (the white sunshade) and phero (I carry)/pherein (to carry), i.e the white sunshade that was borne from the Acropolis in the festivals of Athena Skiras. I assume that the sunshade is some sort of parasol? Anyone want to shed some light (no pun intended) on this matter? Could it be a peplos or some sort of covering?

I hope that this all helps out with the etymology of the Attic calendar months. All this etymology can be found in Liddle and Scott’s Greek English Lexicon for each of the month names. The only one I cannot find an etymology, even a suggested one is Thargelion... As for Mounychion (L&S)/Mounihion (on wiki? why two spellings I don't know), it is suggested to be from mounos/monos (Sole or only). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.217.118.122 (talk) 06:35, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

So when are the planting and harvest times?
The article occasionally mentions these, but doesn't say when they occurred, or how they line up with either Attic or Gregorian months. 96.231.17.131 (talk) 01:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Note for further research
I added Alan Samuel's Greek and Roman Chronology, which is a storehouse of information on the many different calendars used by the different Greek cities. And there were many: Samuels has data on 96 different cities, including the ancient Mycenaean, Boeotian, Delan, & Spartan, as well as the later Macedonian calendar & how the calendars changed under Roman rule. (I've been it for the section on the Athenian Archon List.) -- llywrch (talk) 05:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

This article is a mess
I can spot some very obvious mistakes here such as: Delos is definitely not an Ionian island but I suspect there must be many more, less obvious. Also, there is no inline citation. Much work is indeed needed I will try to pitch in but I don't really have the time.Sgv 6618 (talk) 20:11, 20 September 2016 (UTC)