On The Calendars In Classical Athens

Calendar is a method which using the unit such as “year”,“month” and “day” tocompute time. And in ancient Greek, the initial meaning of the word calendar is“computing time”. In studying ancient history, we must master some knowledges ofthe calendars. Because in ancient society, including the ancient Greek society,calendar is closely related to the political, economic and other social aspects. As theinformations are abundant, the calendars in classical Athens provide a basic standardfor understanding the ancient Greek calendars.This article is divided into four charpters. First, during the early periods ofancient Greek history, the informations about calendars were mostly from the booksof Homer and Hesiod. Homer just mentioned few materials, while Works And Daysinrtroduced a calendar which had established it’s own system. Second, this paperintroduces the Athenian calendar before the Classical Age. It is mainly about the timeof Solon. Herodotus talked about calendar of that time through the mouth of Solon;and other classical authors introduced the calendar reform of Solon more or less.The last two parts focus on the Calendars in classical Athens. At that time,Athenian calendars tended to mature. A year began at summer, and was named withthe name of Archon. And there were three kinds of calendars: festival calendar,political calendar and seasonal calendar. The most important is the first, and the othersalso had important effects.The festival calendar is part of the calendars that popular in ancient Greek world.These three kinds of calendars had different purposes, foundations and functions, andthey constituted the Athenian calendar system. This calendar system, though causedsome confusions in actual use, reflected the social, economic and religiousdevelopments of Athens in the Classical Age. And it was very useful for our studyingon ancient Greek history.