The Greek Calendar: Its Immediate Origins. Ancient greek calendars. Years counting in ancient greece

Initially, the various Greek centers had their own time systems, which led to a lot of confusion. This was due to the self-adjustment of the calendar in each policy. There were differences in the definition of the beginning of the calendar year.

The Athenian calendar is known, which consisted of twelve lunar months, the beginning of each of which approximately coincided with neomeny. The length of the months varied within 29-30 days, and the calendar year consisted of 354 days.

Since the true lunar year includes 354.36 days, the phases of the moon did not exactly correspond to the calendar dates to which they were assigned. Therefore, the Greeks distinguished the calendar "new moon", that is, the first day of the month and the actual new moon.

The names of the months in Greece were in most cases associated with certain holidays and only indirectly related to the seasons.

The beginning of the Athenian year fell on the month of Hecatombeon (July-August), associated with the summer solstice. To align the calendar year with the solar year, the 13th (embolismic) month was inserted in special years - the 2nd Poseideon - with a duration of 29-30 days.

In 432 BC. The Athenian astronomer Meton developed a new 19-year cycle with seven embolismic years: 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th. This order, called the "Meton cycle", provided a sufficiently high accuracy. The discrepancy per day between the solar and lunar years accumulated over 312 solar years.

Later, the cycles of Calippus and Hipparchus were developed, further refining the lunisolar calendar. However, in practice, their amendments were hardly applied.

Until the II century. BC NS. The 13th month was added as the need arose, and sometimes for political and other reasons.

The Greeks did not know the seven-day week and counted the days within a month for decades.

The events in Athens were dated by the names of the Archon officials. From the IV century. BC NS. the calendar of olympiads, held once every four years, has become generally accepted.

The beginning of the era was considered the first Olympiad, held in the summer of 776 BC.

In the Hellenistic era, various eras were used in Greece: the era of Alexander, the era of the Seleucids, etc.

The official calendar, due to deviations from the solar year, was inconvenient for agriculture. Therefore, the Greeks often used a kind of agricultural calendar based on the apparent movements of the stars, on the change of seasons. Detailed description such a calendar in the form of advice to the farmer gave back in the VIII century. BC NS. Hellenic poet Hesiod.

Such a folk calendar was of great practical importance and remained along with the official time count for many centuries of Greek history.

The astronomical thought of the ancient Greeks from distant eras developed in the scheme of the lunisolar calendar; the days in civilian life were counted along the moon, from new moon to new moon; their calendar numbers thus showed only the age of the moon. But with that scientific realism that characterizes Greek culture, with that heartfelt "surprise" with which the Greeks approached nature, they quickly learned that astronomical observations should reveal the connection between the phenomena of the starry sky and the movement of the Sun and that the calendar should reflect this connection. From the VIII century. BC NS. they knew the eight-year period (octoetheteris) - a very primitive instrument, as we know. By the time of Solon the legislator (about the 6th century BC), the corrected octoetheride was already in effect in Attica; each period was lengthened by ½ day. Therefore, from two such periods it turned out:

2.922 2 + 3 = 5.847 days = 198 lunar months = 16 solar years.

This ratio gives quite an acceptable result for the Moon; but the solar year comes out equal to a day, that is, one day more than the Julian year. Consequently, for every 16 years of the solstice - the year for the ancient Greeks began with the summer solstice - shifted in the calendar by 3 days ago; the error is obvious, even with all the difficulty of the corresponding observations. But already in the V century. Meton has made significant improvements. “This man has achieved the truth regarding the prediction of the phenomena of the starry sky, for the movements of the stars and changes in the weather are quite consistent with his data; therefore, the majority of Greeks until my time use its 19-year circle, ”wrote the historian Diodorus in the 1st century BC. BC NS. That meteorological, or climatological, predictions came from the ancient Greeks in parallel with astronomical predictions, this is one of the characteristic features of their general worldview, their knowledge of nature was based on purely observational material, without any admixture of astrology. In what calendar form was it clothed?

The annual circle of the Sun is divided into 12 equal parts (dodecatemoria), into 12 signs of the Zodiac; the origin of this division is a special, very complex question that does not interest us now; for the ancient observer it was essential that the change of annual rising and setting of stars and - he thought - changes in the weather (epistemasia) occur at certain moments of the passage of the Sun in its circle; therefore, zodiacal tables are constructed from observations, in which both phenomena are described according to 12 signs. It is clear that such tables are sufficient for 365 days of the year; then it only remains to reconcile them with the counting of days in the civil lunar year and make this data publicly available - Greek science was never locked in temples and was not a caste. For observing the solstices, Meton erected his steles (columns) and instruments on Pnyx in Athens, near the very square of popular assemblies, and everyone could resolutely see his parapegmas, that is, calendars carved in stone.

For a long time archaeologists did not understand how these calendars could have been arranged; After all, one cannot put on a stone 6.940 dates of the 19-year circle, repeating 19 rounds of the Sun in all the signs of the Zodiac. Only in 1902, during the excavations of the theater in Miletus (in Asia Minor), were the fragments of such a parapegma found; they immediately revealed an ingenious solution to this technical problem, found by the Greeks. In fig. 9 shows one of the fragments of the monument; a number of inscriptions are visible on it, arranged in rows; to the left of the lines, as well as between them, there is a series of small holes; there are 30 of them on the right column - what is shown above Greek letterΛ; Let us number all these holes, putting down numbers in front of the lines, which are not on the monument.

Rice. 9. Ancient Greek permuted calendar

In translation, the inscriptions read as follows:

1 ♦ Sun in Aquarius

2 ♦ The lion begins to enter at dawn and Lyra enters

5 ♦ Swan sets at dawn

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

15 ♦ Andromeda begins to rise in the morning at dawn

18 ♦ Aquarius's middle rises

19 ♦ Pegasus begins to rise in the morning at dawn

21 ♦ Centaurus sets in entirely in the morning

22 ♦ Hydra comes in entirely in the morning

23 ♦ Whale enters at dawn

24 ♦ The arrow comes in, it's time for Zephyr (spring) leading

29 ♦ The whole swan sets in at dawn

30 ♦ [Arcturus] rises at dawn

We see that this is a perfectly preserved zodiac table for 1 month, precisely at the time the Sun passes the sign of Aquarius. In our modern calendar, the Sun enters this sign (300 ° longitude) around January 22; from here it would be easy, with the help of the numbers in front of the lines, to determine the calendar dates of all the other predicted phenomena. But now we must completely forget this solar dating; the Greeks did not know her. In their lunar calendar, the entry of the Sun into any of the signs jumped from date to date according to the years of the circle, as shown in 6. The eight-year period and the methonic circle, type A. But here holes in the stone come to the rescue: if you know what date of the lunar calendar The sun in a given year enters the first sign, then it is enough to put pins with successive dates in all the holes both at the lines and between the lines, alternating months by 29 and 30 days according to the rules of the lunar calendar; then each of the rows of the table, that is, each phenomenon, will fall on a completely definite date of the lunar year; everyone will immediately see to what numbers important and interesting natural phenomena will fall. This is how they finally found out the previously mysterious meaning of the word parapegma and its connection with the verb meaning "to attach", "to work in." It was a popular calendar.

The question of the internal structure of the Metonian circle among the Greeks has not yet been finally resolved by chronologists; for 19 years, 7 embolismic months must be inserted (12 12 + 7 13 = 235); the ancients did not leave any precise description of the structure of the cycle in relation to the order of their placement. It is now generally believed that 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 17 and 19 years of the circle were embolismic. Taking into account that the average solar year in this system comes out equal to a month, the reader can easily build a table of error distribution for the beginning of each of the lunar years, as was done for the 8-year period or for the free lunar calendar.

The introduction of the Metonian circle is associated with the famous astronomical observation reported by Ptolemy: "The summer solstice observed by Meton and Euctemon is recorded in the records of the Athenian archon Apsades, on the 21st day of the Egyptian month Famenot in the morning." The translation of the dating and historical data very accurately determine the day of observation: it is June 27, 432 BC. NS. But from the table of equinoxes it is easy to verify that the solstice was 432, June 28, at 2 o'clock, counting the day from noon, Athenian time (Athens is 1½ hours east of Greenwich). Consequently, Meton's observation is erroneous by no more than 1½ days - a good result for that epoch. The first day of the first Metonian circle is laid on the first neomeny after this solstice, which gives July 16, 432 BC. e., following most of the chronologists.

Ancient greek calendar

At the beginning of the first millennium BC. NS. v Ancient Greece lunisolar calendars began to be created, and each polis (city-state) had its own calendar system. Despite their similarities, each calendar had its own peculiarity and was somewhat different from all the others. The year was divided into 12 months, each of which began with neomeny. To connect with the seasons, an additional, 13th month was periodically inserted.

In different cities of Greece, the months bore their own names, but the Athenian names were most widespread, namely:

The approximate correspondence to our months is indicated in brackets.

The year most often began with the month of the summer solstice, which at that time fell on hecatombeon (July).

In leap years, a second Poseideon was inserted as the embolismic month; sometimes the second skiroforion was an additional month.

At different times, the embolismic years alternated in different ways. So, in the VI century. BC NS. in some places in Greece, the octaetheride was used, in which 3 years out of 8 were leap years - the 2nd, 5th and 8th years of the cycle.

The most popular in Greece was the calendar developed by Meton. In 432 BC. BC, during the festivities dedicated to the 86th Olympiad, a parapegma was installed in the center of Athens - a stone slab with holes into which pins were inserted with the designation of the numbers of the current month. Next to the holes was a text carved in stone indicating impending astronomical phenomena, such as the rising and setting of certain stars, the position of the Sun in the constellations, and other phenomena.

Further improvement Greek calendar associated with the names of Calippus and Hipparchus, which we talked about in the section on the mathematical theory of lunar and lunisolar calendars.

Chronology... In ancient Greece, until the middle of the first millennium BC. NS. the events were dated by the names of officials. Thus, in Athens, years were counted according to the names of the eponyms - the heads of the executive branch (archons) responsible for the correctness of the calendar.

In the IV century. BC NS. the general Hellenic chronology spread among the Olympiads. The history of this chronology is as follows. In ancient Greece, were widely developed sport games... Since 776 BC NS. in the city of Olympia, once every 4 years, games took place that took the character of large national celebrations. In the place where they were held, they were named Olympic. The Olympic Games were timed to coincide with the beginning of the year, but since this time was not associated with a specific date due to the abundance of calendar systems, before the games were held, messengers had to be sent to all cities to notify the population about the upcoming celebrations.

The Olympic Games entered the life of the ancient Greeks so much that they began to count the time according to the Olympiads and the beginning of their era was conditionally attributed to July 1, 776 BC. NS. It is believed that the first Olympic Games took place on this day.

The olympiad chronology was first used in 264 BC. NS. the ancient Greek historian Timaeus, and this count lasted for about seven centuries. Although in 394 AD. NS. Emperor Theodosius I canceled the Olympic Games, and the reckoning of time for the Olympiads was applied a little later.

In the chronology of the Olympiads, the years were designated by the ordinal number of the Olympiad and the number of the year in the four-year period. Thus, the victory of the Greeks over the Persians in the naval battle in the Strait of Salamis dates back to the numbers “75. 1 ”, which means“ the first year of the 75th Olympiad ”.

The translation of these dates to our time is made according to the formula

А = 776 - [(Оl - 1) × 4 + (t - 1)],

where A is the required date, O1 is the number of the Olympiad, (t is the number of the year in the Olympiad.

The Battle of Salamis took place in the first year of the 75th Olympiad. Let's translate this date into our chronology.

Substituting the values ​​O1 = 75 and I = 1 into the formula, we get

A = 776 - [(75 - 1) × 4 + (1 - 1) 1 = 480.

Indeed, the Battle of Salamis took place in September 480 BC. NS.

If the expression in square brackets in this formula were equal to 776 or more, then 775 would have to be subtracted from it. In this case, we would get the year of our era.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. NS. Greece, which consisted of separate city-states (policies), was under the cultural influence of many countries of the East. The ancient Greeks colonized neighboring islands and coasts from Asia Minor to southern Italy and even the northern shores of the Black Sea. And those of them who swam and those who were engaged in agriculture needed certain knowledge, needed a calendar,

To carry out agricultural work in a timely manner, the ancient Greeks coordinated their lives with the change of seasons, with the visible annual movement of the Sun across the sky. That is why already in the poems of Homer (VIII century BC) it is testified that the ancient Greeks had a concept of the solar year, although ... there is no evidence that they used solar calendars at that time. It can only be argued that already somewhere in the IX century. BC NS. the ancient Greeks knew how the appearance of the starry sky changes in rhythm with the change of seasons. They used this annually repeated change in the visibility of individual groups of stars and constellations in everyday life as a kind of solar calendar.

This is confirmed by the advice that the poet Hesiod (VIII century BC) gave to rural workers:

“Begin harvesting when the Pleiades ascend, and plowing when they are about to enter. When Sirius is overhead, cut down the trees. Arcturus appears in the evening - prune the vines. Orion and Sirius go out to the middle of the sky - pick grapes. Fifty days after the solstice, goods can be transported by sea for sale ... With the setting of Orion and the Pleiades, the year is over. "

As you can see, here the beginnings of specific field work are clearly compared with the view of the starry sky. In particular, the sickle should be taken during the first morning (heliacal) rise of the Pleiades (for the time of Hesiod at the latitude of Greece, this is about May 12 according to the modern calendar), when the Pleiades set at dawn (early November), it is time to plow. At the end of February, when the star Arcturus rises from the sea in the evening, it is necessary to prune the vines, etc.

Moments of morning and evening sunrise and sunset of several of the most notable stars, at the latitude of Athens in 501 BC. NS. and 300 AD NS. are given in table.

Table. Rise and set of "calendar" stars at the latitude of Athens according to the Gregorian calendar

It is easy to see that due to precession, the visibility conditions for specific stars and their groups are continuously changing. Therefore, in our time, Hesiod's advice can no longer be used ...

"... In days and months - with the Moon"

As noted by the ancient Greek scientist of the 1st century. before. n. NS. Gemines in their "Elements of Astronomy", the Greeks had to sacrifice to their gods according to the customs of their ancestors, and therefore "they must maintain agreement with the Sun in years, and with the Moon in days and months." Indeed, the Greeks used lunisolar calendars in their business and social life. The names of the months of these calendars were usually derived from the names of the festivities celebrated in the corresponding month. So, the Athenians in the first month of their calendar solemnly sacrificed one hundred bulls - "hecatomb", therefore the month was named Hecatomveon. On the first day, civil servants entered their posts, on the 12th day there were holidays dedicated to the god Chronos, who personified time. On the seventh day of the third month - Voidromion - a holiday was celebrated in honor of Apollo Voidromius - "who helps in the battle with a cry", and the day before the Greeks honored the dead. In the month of Pianepsion, on the 7th, the Greeks celebrated the feast of grapes, on the 10th-14th, a women's holiday, on the 28th, in every fourth year, there were Hephaestia, accompanied by a torchlight procession - festivities in honor of Hephaestus, the god of fire and blacksmithing, the next two days and were the holidays of blacksmiths. In the eighth month - Anfestirion - there was a holiday of the beginning of the bottling of new wine ("small Dionysias"), corresponding to the event, the "feast of flowers" was called Anfestiria. In the month of Hamilione, marriages took place.

The most famous were the Athenian and Macedonian lunisolar calendars. The first of them, in particular, was used by Greek astronomers, the second became widespread in the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Here is an approximate correspondence of the months of Athenian (left), Macedonian and our calendars:

According to some reports, the ancient Greeks originally began their year around winter solstice... Then its beginning was postponed to the summer solstice, since at this time usually there were meetings at which officials.

The day for the ancient Greeks began at sunset and consisted of the night and the day following it. The days of the month were divided into three decades (such a division is already found in Hesiod). The first 10 days were simply counted - from the first to the tenth, the next 9 were called "first", "second", etc. with the addition of the words "after ten", the remaining days were counted in reverse order: "The ninth from the end of the month", "the eighth from the end of the month", etc. the 30th day was called "old and new", and the previous 29th was "preceding"; in a month of 29 days, he was excluded from the account.

The name of the 30th day has a deep meaning. For them, the Greeks, in the count of days, seemed to "break away" from observations: the next day they considered the 1st day of the new calendar month, regardless of whether the crescent of the moon is visible in the sky or not (after all, in the fall, at the latitude of Athens, it can be seen only on the third day after conjunction ).

It is noteworthy that the ancient Greeks on each day of the month honored one or more gods to whom this day was dedicated. In Athens, in particular, the first and last day of each month was dedicated to Hecate - the goddess, who was at first considered the patroness of human affairs, later - the goddess of ghosts, nightmares, the lord of shadows in the underworld, sometimes she was identified with the goddess of the moon Selene. The 1st day of the month was also dedicated to Apollo and Hermes, the 3rd, 13th and 23rd days to Athena. The last three days of each month were considered unlucky, they were dedicated to the dead, as well as to the underground gods.

In Gemina we find some information about the structure of the ancient Greek lunisolar calendars: "For business and public life, the length of the monthly period was rounded up to 291/2 days, so that two months were 59 days." Calendar year consisted of 12 months. To coordinate the length of the civil year with the solar year, according to Geminus, "the ancients inserted an additional month (in Athens, it was usually the winter Posideon) every year." This means that the Greeks at the time were using trietheride, the most primitive two-year lunar cycle. How long this continued, how the Greeks brought their lunar calendar into agreement with the solar one is unknown.

Other evidence for ancient Greek calendars comes from Herodotus (484-425 BC): "The Greeks inserted a month in every second or third year for the sake of (matching) the seasons." Apparently, it is already mentioned here about the use by the Greeks of the 8-year cycle - the octaetheride, which was allegedly introduced in Greece by the poet and politician Solon (640-560 BC) in 593 BC. NS.

In fact, information about the reform carried out at that time is very contradictory. Plutarch (46-126) says about Solon: “Noticing the inequality of the month and the fact that the movement of the moon does not agree with either the setting or the rising of the sun, but often on the same day the moon catches up with the sun and moves away from it, he decided call this day "old and new", believing that part of this day before the conjunction (of the Moon with the Sun) belongs to the expiring month, the rest of the beginning. "

The writer Diogenes Laertius (1st half of the 3rd century BC) limited himself to the statement that Solon told the Athenians to count the days according to the Moon. According to the philosopher Proclus (410-485), before Solon, the Greeks did not seem to know at all that the lunar months are not always 30 days.

Apparently, Solon aligned the calendar with the Moon by inserting extra days, and perhaps not the Sun, throwing out an extra month to bring the beginning of the lunar year to the summer solstice. It is not excluded, of course, that he did indeed introduce octaetheride. The embolismic years were the 1st and 3rd years of the odd and 2nd years of the even Olympiad.

It would seem, observing the phases of the same moon, the same neomeny, the townspeople of different policies would have to start counting the day in months from the same days (it's another matter that the months themselves could be called differently). But that was just not the case. In part, apparently, because the octaether system was not universally accepted at that time, and it still "worked" badly. As a result, as Plutarch noted, there was no agreement between the individual calendars on the count of days in months. We will restrict ourselves to just one example. Describing one of the events of the war 431-421. BC e., Aristotle's student Aristoxenus (more than a hundred years later) wrote that at that time "the tenth day of the month among the Corinthians corresponded to the fifth day among the Athenians and the eighth day according to some other calendar." Apparently, this particular day corresponded to the 7th or 8th day of the moon, but in Athens the calendar was two or three days behind the change in the phases of the moon, while in Corinth it was ahead of it ...

One can therefore understand the tremendous enthusiasm with which in 432 BC. NS. during the Olympic Games, the discovery of the astronomer Meton was greeted. Meton derived a relationship linking a tropical year with a synodic month, and also calculated and compared on special tables the change of annual rising and setting of stars with a change in the phases of the moon in the 19-year cycle. These tables were carved on stone slabs and installed in city squares for public viewing. This stone calendar is called parapegma.

Praise parapegma

The word "parapegma" itself means "attach", "work in." But what relation it has to the calendars, it was possible to establish only in 1902, when during excavations of the theater in the city of Miletus (a former Greek colony on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor), fragments of such a parapegma were found. One of its fragments is shown in Fig.

Rice. Fragment of the ancient Greek calendar-parapegma

Here you can see the inscriptions arranged in rows, to the left of which, as well as between them, there is a row of holes, there are 30 of them in the right column. To better understand how this calendar works, we will number all the holes by putting numbers in front of the rows (they are not on the monument). The inscriptions say the following:

1 O Sun in Aquarius 2 O Leo begins to set at dawn and Lyra sets O O 5 O Swan enters at dawn OOOOOOOOOO 15 O Andromeda begins to rise in the morning at dawn O O 18 O Aquarius middle rises 19 O Pegasus begins to ascend in the morning O 21 O Centaur sets in entirely in the morning 22 O Hydra sets in entirely in the morning 23 O Whale enters at dawn 24 O Arrow enters, Zephyr time (spring) brings O O O O 29 O Swan enters entirely at dawn 30 O Arcturus rises at dawn

An analysis of these inscriptions shows that we are talking about a change in the visibility of the rising and setting of stars in Greece during the passage of the Sun through the constellation of Aquarius. The left side of the table apparently spoke of similar phenomena occurring thirty days earlier. It can be assumed that there were six such tables in total, and each had 61 days “scheduled”. The duration of one year in the methonic cycle averages 6940: 19 = 365.26 days. During this time, Meton believed, the Sun passes through 12 zodiacal constellations, lingering in each of them for 365.26: 12 = 30.4 days.

So, on the parapegma, the civil lunisolar calendar was compared with the changes in the appearance of the starry sky during the solar year and with the corresponding change in the seasons. Let us try, following Meton, to "use" the fragment of the parapegma at our disposal. Suppose that in the year that we take as the initial year (let's call it conditionally the first year of the cycle), the new moon (or neomania) took place at the moment when the "Swan entirely sets at dawn", corresponding to hole 29. Insert a pin with number 1, in the next hole (30) - with number 2, etc. These will be the calendar dates of the lunar month of the given year. Likewise, after 29 and 30 days, the same pins will be installed on other tables (including the left side of the parapegma and the top of the right side). Thus, a change in the appearance of the starry sky (not so clearly striking!) Will be compared with a clearly noticeable phenomenon - a change in the phases of the moon. Somewhere on one of the tables it will be recorded on what date and which lunar month "In the morning the Pleiades rise", announcing the time of the harvest ...

After 12 lunar months, the same new moon will come 11 days earlier. Therefore, in the next, second year of the 19-year cycle, the same month will begin when “the middle of Aquarius ascends” - hole 18 (= 29-11). Therefore, all pins with the number of days must be moved back 11 positions in the holes. In the third year of the cycle, the beginning of the month moves another 11 days back (on this fragment of the parapegma, it will fall on hole 18-11 = 7). Accordingly, we rearrange all the pins with the numbers of days. During these two years, the beginning of the month moved back by 11 11 = 22 days. Therefore, in the third year, the insert of the 13th month will be made. As a result, the pin with the beginning of the month in the fourth year will move 30-11 = 19 days forward - to hole 7 + 19 = 26. In general, the hole numbers of this parapegma fragment corresponding to the beginning of the lunar month in subsequent years of the 19-year lunar cycle can be written in the form of a plate:

After 19 years, the cycle is completely repeated. The following is curious here. On a fragment of a parapegma there are holes corresponding to 30 days. Meanwhile, as can be seen from the tablet, if Meton's cycle were perfectly accurate, the new moon could occur only in 19 of them. These days can be somehow distinguished, for example, by gilding the corresponding holes and writing down the year number in the 19-year cycle near each of them with golden digits, in which the lunar month is counted from this hole (corresponding to a certain position of the stars in the sky!). If this is done, then it's okay that the pins fell out of the hole during the transportation of the parapegma, or curious boys rearranged them for a joke at night. Remembering the number of the year in the 19-year cycle, we will immediately find the places (holes) for the first numbers of the months, after which it is easy to establish all the others.

11.01.2016

The ancient Greek calendar is a numbering system that was used in Ancient Greece and neighboring states in the first millennium BC. This calendar is not currently in use. Any familiar wall calendars, desk calendars, loose-leaf calendars and pocket calendars represent the Gregorian system of calculation, adopted several centuries later than the Hellenic one.

What is the ancient Greek calendar

The solar-lunar calendar used by the ancient Greeks was created taking into account astronomical cycles. The year consisted of 12 months oriented to the lunar cycle. Each month contained 29 or 30 days, the year was 354 days. About once every three years, another month was added.

The calendar of the ancient Greeks was corrected several times. A cycle of 8 years was introduced, in which an additional month was inserted at 3, 5 and 8 years. The 8-year cycle was first introduced in Athens in 594 BC, the idea belonged to the politician and poet Solon. About 50 years later, the astronomer Meton proposed using a more accurate 19-year cycle, which had 7 insert months. The new style was introduced for a long time; later it was decided to abandon its use.

Features of use

The disadvantage of the ancient Greek system was that each city had its own calendar and month names. They usually coincided with the names of the holidays that were celebrated that month.

In theory, each new moon was supposed to give rise to a new month, but in practice this did not happen every time, which caused confusion and forced the use of terms such as "lunar new moon" and "civil". Thus, the astronomical calendar was at odds with the public one.

Confusion arose at the beginning of the year as well. According to the calendar of Athens, the first new moon after the summer solstice was considered the beginning of the year; according to the calendar of the city of Thebes (Boeotian calendar), the year began after the winter solstice. The Boeotian calendar was the closest to the modern Gregorian system.

The common Hellenic chronology was based on traditional Greek sports - the Olympic Games. Competitions were held every 4 years in the city of Olympia and took on the character of folk celebrations. The opening of the games was timed to coincide with the beginning of the year. The beginning of the ancient Greek chronology dates back to the year of the first Olympic Games.

The euphonic names of the Hellenic months - Poseidon, Hecatombeon, Elaphebolion, etc. - are now almost forgotten. People use the Gregorian calendar, which is more accurate in terms of astronomy and easier to use. This system of calculating time is firmly entrenched in the public mind. Calendars are used by each of us - this is an affordable and useful device.

The printing industry has achieved unprecedented development in recent decades. Today, printing calendars has become a fast and relatively inexpensive activity.