With the exception of Athens, we do not know completely the
calendar of a single other Grecian city: but we know that the
months of all were lunar months, and that the practice followed
in regard to intercalation, for the prevention of inconvenient
divergence between lunar and solar time, was different in each
different city. Accordingly, the lunar month of one city did not,
except by accident, either begin or end at the same time as the
lunar month of another. M. Boeckh observes (ad Corp. Inscr. t. i,
p. 734): “Variorum populorum menses, qui sibi secundum legitimos
annorum cardines respondent, non quovis conveniunt anno, nisi
cyclus intercalationum utrique populi idem sit: sed ubi differunt
cycli, altero populo prius intercalante mensem dum non intercalat
alter, eorum qui non intercalarunt mensis certus cedit jam in eum
mensem alterorum qui præcedit illum cui vulgo respondet certus
iste mensis: quod tamen negligere solent chronologi.” Compare
also the valuable Dissertation of K. F. Hermann, Ueber die
Griechische Monatskunde, Götting. 1844, pp. 21-27, where all that
is known about the Grecian names and arrangement of months is
well brought together.
The names of the Argeian months we hardly know at all (see K. F.
Hermann, pp. 84-124): indeed, the only single name resting on
positive proof, is that of a month _Hermæus_. How far the months
of Argos agreed with those of Epidaurus or Sparta we do not
know, nor have we any right to presume that they did agree. Nor
is it by any means clear that every city in Greece had what may
properly be called a _system_ of intercalation, so correct as to
keep the calendar right without frequent arbitrary interferences.
Even at Athens, it is not yet satisfactorily proved that the
Metonic calendar was ever actually received into civil use.
Cicero, in describing the practice of the Sicilian Greeks about
reckoning of time, characterizes their interferences for the
purpose of correcting the calendar as occasional rather than
systematic. Verres took occasion from these interferences to make
a still more violent change, by declaring the Ides of January to
be the calends of March (Cicero, Verr. ii, 52, 129).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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