Extract from Aristophanes Clouds
Aristophanes
The Clouds, Hayes Barton Press
ISBN 978-1-59377-246-8
Aristophanes, Clouds, line 607 - 626 - in Greek
Complete Works of Aristophanes,
The Clouds lines 615-30: Lulu.com, pp. 180–,
ISBN 978-0-557-78159-1
LEADER OF SECOND SEMI-CHORUS
As we were preparing to come here, we were hailed by the Moon and were charged to wish joy and happiness both to the Athenians and to their allies; further, she said that she was enraged and that you treated her very shamefully, her, who does not pay you in words alone, but who renders you all real benefits. Firstly, thanks to her, you save at least a drachma each month for lights, for each, as he is leaving home at night, says, "Slave, buy no torches, for the moonlight is beautiful,"-not to name a thousand other benefits. Nevertheless you do not reckon the days correctly and your calendar is naught but confusion. Consequently the gods load her with threats each time they get home and are disappointed of their meal, because the festival has not been kept in the regular order of time. When you should be sacrificing, you are putting to the torture or administering justice. And often, we others, the gods, are fasting in token of mourning for the death of Memnon or Sarpedon, while you are devoting yourselves to joyous libations. It is for this, that last year, when the lot would have invested Hyperbolus with the duty of Amphictyon, we took his crown from him, to teach him that time must be divided according to the phases of the moon.
Aristophanes (2008).
Clouds. Line 607- Richer Resources Publications. pp. 44–.
ISBN 978-0-9797571-3-6.
CHORUS LEADER
When we were getting ready to move over here,
Moon met us and told us, first of all, to greet,
on her behalf, the Athenians and their allies.
Then she said she was upset—the way you treat her [610]
is disgraceful, though she brings you all benefits—
not just in words but in her deeds. To start with,
she saves you at least one drachma every month
for torchlight— in the evening, when you go outside,
you all can say, “No need to buy a torch, my boy,
Moon’s light will do just fine.” She claims she helps you all
in other ways, as well, but you don’t calculate
your calendar the way you should—no, instead
you make it all confused, and that’s why, she says,
the gods are always making threats against her,
when they are cheated of a meal and go back home
because their celebration has not taken place
according to a proper count of all the days.
And then, when you should be making sacrifice, [620]
you’re torturing someone or have a man on trial.
And many times, when we gods undertake a fast,
because we’re mourning Memnon or Sarpedon,
you’re pouring out libations, having a good laugh.
That’s the reason, after his choice by lot this year
to sit on the religious council, Hyperbolos
had his wreath of office snatched off by the gods.
That should make him better understand the need
to count the days of life according to the moon.
Indeed the Athenian festive calendar is a confusing matter and a highly controversial one. At first sight it seems to have little mathematical, logical or even astronomical consistency. It did not follow any real logical pattern.This was perhaps because the festivities of Athens and the calendar which controlled them were a very large part of the business of the government of Athens. They were controlled by the Athenian state and its leaders (archontes), largely paid for by the state, and the Athenian people were hugely organised by the state and their tribes to participate in them. Therefore those in power could choose to manipulate the calendar whenever it suited them and for whatever reason they liked. perhaps the only limit on their power in this matter was that every citizen could look up at the evening sky on cloudless days and look out for the new moon and its first crescent light to see just how far those in power were manipulating the calendar.
The days when the festivities took place were determined by set days in the Athenian or Attic Festive Calendar. The New Year began in summer, technically defined as beginning in the evening following the first sighting of the new moon [
noumenia], namely the first sighting of the moon's crescent after sunset following the summer solstice [usually 21st June in the modern calendar, less often 20th or 22nd June]. The Attic year consisted of 12 lunar months [from new moon to new moon], with an occasional intercalary 13th month inserted to bring the calendar back into line with the solar year. Months were always either 29 or 30 days [hollow and full] which were meant to alternate every other month to keep up with the astronomical synodic month or lunar phase cycle [new moon to new moon].
The length of the mean synodic month (new moon to new moon) is 29.530588853
days (= 29d 12h 44m 03s). However, the length of any one synodic month can vary from 29.26 to 29.80 days due to perturbing effects of the Sun on the Moon's eccentric orbit But those in power in Athenians often manipulated this cycle for their own purposes. The new moon [moon and sun conjuction] was thus was always meant to occur on the last or penultimate day of a month, but as a result of calendar manipulation this did not always happens.
The months of the Athenian calendar were given names after the principal festival held during that month. In order from the Athenian new year they were called Hekatombaion, Metageitnion, Boedromion, Pyanopsion, Maimakterion, Posideon, Gamelion, Anthesterion, Elaphebolion, Mounichion, Thargelion, and Skirophorion. During "leap years" with their additional intercalary month a second Poseidon month was added.
The Ancient Greeks had no conception of astrology. All the night sky did was to indicate to them the seasons and their changes.
[PDF]
The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Theatres in Relation to the Topography and the Greek MythologyG Pantazis - Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2017
The Greek Calendar
George Thomson
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
Vol. 63 (1943), pp. 52-65
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
DOI: 10.2307/627003
Postscript: The Athenian Calendars
W. Kendrick Pritchett
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Bd. 128 (1999), pp. 79-93
Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH
The Calendar of the Gibbous Moon
W. Kendrick Pritchett
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Bd. 49 (1982), pp. 243-266
Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH
The Athenian Calendar
W. S. Ferguson
Classical Philology
Vol. 3, No. 4 (Oct., 1908), pp. 386-398
Published by: University of Chicago Press
William Kendrick Pritchett; Otto Neugebauer (1947),
The calendars of Athens, Harvard Univ. Press
Lambert, Stephen. “The Sacrificial Calendar of Athens.” The Annual of the British School at Athens, vol. 97, 2002, pp. 353–399., www.jstor.org/stable/30073193.
Ralph M. Rosen (19 April 2004).
Time and Temporality in the Ancient World. UPenn Museum of Archaeology. pp. 147–.
ISBN 978-1-931707-67-1.
Miles, M., & Neils, J. (2021). Athenian Festivals. In J. Neils & D. Rogers (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens (Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World, pp. 332-344). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108614054.025
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens - Google Books
Calendars of Athens again
W. Kendrick Pritchett
Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Année 1957 Volume 81 Numéro 1 pp. 269-301
The Athenian Lunar Month
W. Kendrick Pritchett
Classical Philology
Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1959), pp. 151-157
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Royal Astronomical Society, Quarterly Journal
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1988QJRAS..29..511S
The Metonic and Callippic cycles
Fotheringham, J. K.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 84, p.383-392
Bradley Hudson McLean (2002), An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods from Alexander the Great Down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.-A.D. 337), University of Michigan Press, pp. 159–, ISBN 0-472-11238-4
J. Rasmus Brandt; Jon W. Iddeng (2012). Greek and Roman Festivals: Content, Meaning, and Practice. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-969609-3.
Robert Parker (2005). Polytheism and Society at Athens. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-153452-2.
August Mommsen , Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum: Geordnet nach attischem Kalender, BoD – Books on Demand, ISBN 978-3-95580-315-5
https://archive.org/stream/festederstadtat00mommgoog#page/n6/mode/1up
Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge; John Gould; David Malcolm Lewis (1968), The dramatic festivals of Athens, Clarendon Press, ISBN 978-0-19-814258-4
Yale studies in the history of science and medicine. Volume 11. Sharon Louise Gibbs Greek and Roman Sundials. 1976. ISBN 978-0-300-01802-8.
Elias Joseph Bickerman. Chronology of the ancient world. Cornell University Press.
William Bell Dinsmoor. The Archons of Athens in the Hellenistic Age. Literary Licensing, LLC. ISBN 978-1-258-55533-7.
Robert Hannah (2013). Greek and Roman Calendars. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-84966-751-7.
B. L. van der Waerden (1960). Greek Astronomical Calendars and their Relation to the Athenian Civil Calendar. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 80, pp 168-180. doi:10.2307/628385.
http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0075426900101107Andrea Orlando (27 May 2017).
The Light, The Stones and The Sacred: Proceedings of the XVth Italian Society of Archaeoastronomy Congress.
A Study on the Orientation of Greek Theatres: Springer. pp. 107–.
ISBN 978-3-319-54487-8.
The Omitted Day in Athens and the Mysteries
Benjamin D. Meritt
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Bd. 35 (1979), pp. 145-151
Published by: Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH
Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20185733
The Count of Days at Athens
Benjamin D. Meritt
The American Journal of Philology
Vol. 95, No. 3 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 268-279
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.2307/293914
Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/293914
Also
Ronald S. Stroud; Jaan Ruhvel (1977). California Studies. University of California Press. pp. 181–. ISBN 978-0-520-09565-6.
The Hollow Month At Athens
Benjamin D. Meritt1
Mnemosyne, Volume 30, Issue 3, pages 217 – 242
Publication Year : 1977
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852577X00509
Athenian Calendar Problems
Benjamin D. Meritt
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
Vol. 95 (1964), pp. 200-260
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.2307/283790
Meritt, B. D. (1968). Calendar Studies.
ArchEph,
1969, 77-115.
Boutsikas, E. (2015). Greek Temples and Rituals. In Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (pp. 1573-1581). Springer New York.
Edward M. Reingold; Nachum Dershowitz (5 April 2018).
Calendrical Calculations: The Ultimate Edition.
Olympiad Year Reckoning: Cambridge University Press. p. 82.
ISBN 978-1-108-54803-8.
Primitive Time-Reckoning : Martin P. Nilsson - Internet Archive
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars: I. The Parapegma of Euctemon.”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 29, no. 2, 1984, pp. 101–114.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41133705.
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars: II. Callippos and His Calendar.”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 29, no. 2, 1984, pp. 115–124.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41133706.
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars: III. The Calendar of Dionysios.”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 29, no. 2, 1984, pp. 125–130.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41133707.
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars: IV. The Parapegma of the Egyptians and Their ‘Perpetual Tables.’”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 32, no. 2, 1985, pp. 95–104.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41133746.
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars V. The Motion of
the Sun in the Parapegma of Geminos and in the Romaka-Siddhānta.”
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, vol. 34, no. 3, 1985, pp. 231–239.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41133770.
Van der Waerden, B. L. “Greek Astronomical Calendars and Their Relation to the Athenian Civil Calendar.”
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 80, 1960, pp. 168–180.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/628385.
Paul A. Iversen. “The Calendar on the Antikythera Mechanism and the Corinthian Family
of Calendars.”
Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 86, no. 1, 2017, pp. 129–203.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/10.2972/hesperia.86.1.0129.
Thomson, George. “The Greek Calendar.”
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 63, 1943, pp. 52–65.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/627003.
Robin Osborne: Competitive festivals and the polis: a context for the dramatic festivals at Athens
pp 21-37 in Tragedy, Comedy and The Polis edited by Alan H. Sommerstein 1990