Hellenic calendars

The Hellenic calendar—or more properly, the Hellenic calendars, for there was no uniform calendar imposed upon all of Classical Greece—began in most Greek states between Autumn and Winter except the Attic calendar, which began in June. The Greeks, as early as the time of Homer, appear to have been perfectly familiar with the division of the year into the twelve lunar months but no intercalary month Embolimos or day is then mentioned. Independent of the division of a month into days, it was divided into periods according to the increase and decrease of the moon. Thus, the first day or new moon was called Noumenia. The month in which the year began, as well as the names of the months, differed among the states, and in some parts even no names existed for the months, as they were distinguished only numerically, as the first, second, third, fourth month, etc.

Contents

Calendars by region

Attic

See Attic calendar

Boeotian

Cretan

Delphic

Epirotic

only alphabetically

Laconian

Macedonian

See Macedonian calendar

Rhodian

on the Rhodian calendar[1]

Sicilian

References

  1. ^ Origines kalendarlae hellenicae [1] by Edward Greswell