Primitive Time-reckoning / A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples

by Martin P. Nilsson

In the Homeric poems the time-reckoning stands at a primitive stage, and is indeed lower than among many barbaric peoples. Very few natural times of day are recognised, the days are counted by dawns, according to the pars pro toto method. Four larger seasons are known, but also smaller ones, e. g. attention is paid to the birds of passage. Certain phases of stars are known, and also the solstices[1192]. The lunar months are counted, e. g. the months of pregnancy[1193], but not named; the day of new moon is celebrated. In Hesiod the same time-reckoning appears further developed, a fact which is due partly to the nature of the contents of his poem, partly to its later date; in particular, phases of stars and smaller seasons are frequently mentioned, and it is a great advance that the days are numerically reckoned; they are counted in one case from the solstice, and further the days of the month are counted, sometimes in half-months, sometimes in decades.[1194] In the appendix of the Days an exceedingly strong day-superstition shews itself.

When history begins, the Greek time-reckoning as we know it appears: it is a lunisolar year with named lunar months, in which the intercalation is cyclically regulated, so that in a period of eight years (Oktaeteris) a month is three times intercalated, viz. in the 3rd, 5th, and 8th years. This appearance of an ordered form of year and a cyclical intercalation is completely unprepared for. We miss that association of the months with the seasons and the naming after these which, as the preceding investigations have shewn, alone gives rise to an empirical intercalation. The investigation of primitive time-reckoning has led to the perception that herein lies the crucial point of the problem of the origin of the Greek time-reckoning. In my opinion the Greek calendar cannot be explained from premisses originating in the country itself, and therefore cannot have arisen of itself in Greece.

The regulation of the Greek calendar has throughout a sacral character. The idea of the selection of lucky or unlucky days prevails not only in superstition but also in the official religious cult. Most of the old festivals fall, according to universal custom, either during or shortly before the time of full moon; the festivals of Apollo form an exception and are all celebrated on the 7th, those of his twin sister Artemis being held on the preceding day, the 6th. The names of months appear in sharp contradistinction to the world-wide method of nomenclature in that they all, in so far as they are explainable, are derived from festivals. Several hundred names are known from the various states of the mother country and the colonies, and among these there is only a single exception to the rule just stated, viz. Ἁλιοτρόπιος, i. e. the solstice month, which belongs to later times, besides a few unexplained names, such as Γεῦστος, Δίνων; numbered months were first created among the leagues of states of the period after Alexander the Great, in order to introduce a means of common understanding such as was necessitated by the multiplicity of the local calendars. These cases are all quite isolated and cannot disturb the rule.

The inference that may be drawn in regard to the months from their names and from the ordering of the religious cult is further established by other matters in regard to the cyclical intercalation. The eight-year intercalary cycle cannot be distinguished from the Ennaeteris period (so called according to the Greek inclusive method of reckoning, the eight-year period according to our method of expression) of certain festivals. Such festivals are only known at Delphi, where three of them were held (Charila, Stepterion, Herois). The great Pythian games themselves were originally held every eighth year, and then, after the first holy war (probably in the year 582, from which the Pythiads were counted), every fourth year. Since eight years seemed too long an interval, the period was halved in order to secure a more frequent celebration, and the Isthmian and Nemean games were even held every second year, i. e. the period was divided into four. The Olympiad reckoning will go still farther back, if the traditional starting-point, the year 776 B. C., is to be accepted. However the authenticity of the older portion of the list of Olympian victors has been sharply disputed, though the criticism certainly seems to have weakened a little quite recently. But a peculiarity attaches to this festival, viz. that it is celebrated alternately in one of the two consecutive months, Apollonios and Parthenios[1195]. This can only be explained as follows:—The Oktaeteris has 99 months. Originally the Olympic festival was not fixed according to the calendar, but the date was simply arranged by the numbering of the months of the Oktaeteris, in which the first half of the Oktaeteris was given 50 months and the second 49. In the calendarial Oktaeteris, on the other hand, there is an intercalation once in the first half and twice in the second, i. e. the first four years have 49 months and the next four 50; hence it follows that when the old custom was to be preserved in regard to the date, the month of the festival necessarily varied in the given manner. When the chronological arrangement of the Olympic games was introduced, the Oktaeteris calendar therefore was not known, but only the Oktaeteris period.

The introduction of the calendar was effected in the form of the establishment of fasti for festivals and religious cult, in which the periodically recurring notable events of the cult, viz. sacrifices and festivals, were noted down in calendrical succession and in some cases also described. Fragments of these fasti from later times have in several cases come down to us, and similar fasti formed part of the legislation of Solon. Solon in the year 594 arranged the sacral fasti of Athens, and with them the calendar. That he was the first to introduce the calendar cannot be stated; there is no evidence to shew that the specific peculiarities of the Athenian calendar were introduced by him. The evidence is however valuable as a terminus ante quem. Plato in his Laws prescribes that the legislation shall arrange the festivals according to the decrees of Delphi. Here, as elsewhere in the Laws, he returns to the general Greek custom. The fasti were therefore arranged under the superintendence of Delphi, and Solon also had certainly done the same, for he stood in other respects in close connexion with Delphi. In addition to which Geminos mentions “the commandment of the laws and the oracular decrees, to sacrifice in three ways, i. e. monthly, daily, yearly”. At a later period also, those who superintended the calendar were men learned in sacral matters. Thus the seer Lampon, at the time of the Peloponnesian War, brought forward a proposal for the intercalation of a month; he was an exegetes and perhaps even πυθόχρηστος.

From all this it follows that it was the necessity for the regulation of the religious cult that first created the calendar in Greece. The succession of days in the year was in the first place arranged in the form of sacral fasti, and this arrangement was followed by the official civil calendar, while the peasants and sailors kept to the reckoning by phases of the stars. All indications—especially the above-mentioned festivals of Delphi, the dictum of Plato, etc.—seem to shew that this regulation originated at Delphi; not that it was actually enjoined by the oracle, but the necessity for the regulation was aggravated there, and its performance was therefore supported and superintended. Only in Delphi could the requisites for the carrying out of such a work be found united. It is the business of the oracle to maintain peace with the gods, and this is above all achieved through the proper cult, in which the dates are of the greatest importance, no less important indeed than the expiation of murder and the veneration of the heroes. In the pylagorai and hieromnemones, who met twice a year for deliberation, and in the exegetai there was a circle closely connected with Delphi, each member of which could spread in his own state the ideas he there imbibed[1196]. Certain states maintained special officials who fostered the connexion with Delphi, such as the Pythioi of Sparta, the ἐξηγηταὶ πυθόχρηστοι of Athens. And, above all, it is only thus that the consistently sacral character of the Greek calendar and names of months in general can be satisfactorily explained.

There remains something to be added, viz. that, as has been remarked above, all the festivals of Apollo of which the date is known—and they are not few in number—fall on the 7th, on which day also the birth of the god was celebrated at Delphi and elsewhere. It is clear that this is a definitely intended regulation. Otherwise, too, Apollo is the patron of the reckoning in months. Even in Homer the day of new moon is a feast of Apollo, and later, as Νεομήνιος, i. e. new-moon god, he receives sacrifices on the first of each month. The initial day of the third decade was also dedicated to him, for which reason he was called Εἰκάδιος. He is without a rival in his importance for the selection of days, which is dependent upon the reckoning in months.

Now, according to the data given above, the cyclical intercalation was introduced before the beginning of the 6th century, most probably in the 7th; at most, on the strength of Hesiod and of Homer (who in the Odyssey knows only the beginning of the development, viz. Apollo as the god of the new-moon festival), we may go back to the 8th. But it has already been pointed out that in Greece the preliminary conditions for the arising of even the empirical intercalation, and much more of the cyclical, are lacking. Whence then has the latter come? This is the real enigma in connexion with the problem of the origin of the Greek time-reckoning. In my opinion the question can only be answered in one way: it has come from without, from the east, and originally from Babylonia. Here we are met with the difficulty that an intercalary cycle was not introduced into Babylonia before the 6th century. But, as we have already remarked, the knowledge that in eight years the lunar months could be brought by the intercalation of three months to fit into the solar year must have been reached long before, through a regular administration of the intercalation, although in Babylonia, where the intercalation was managed by a central authority, there was no reason for erecting this knowledge into a rule. In Greece matters were quite different. The land was split up into a great number of little states in one of which it might often happen that there was no one who could properly manage an empirical intercalation. And even if there were, the empirical intercalation must soon have led to variations in all these different states, and hopeless confusion must have arisen. Since Delphi was not a central court which could look after the intercalation, there must be established, if order was to be created,—and the whole movement started with this idea—a cycle which should be binding in the future.

It seems to me a well-authorised view that the god Apollo came to Greece from Asia, and even apart from this there is reason to suppose that in the religion of Apollo there is a Babylonian element, viz. the prevailing importance of the seventh day of the month in the cult of the god. A similar preference for the seventh day of the month is seen again in the shabattu. And in point of fact it is originally only the seventh day that is brought into prominence, the other shabattu being a later development from this[1197]; most of the Apollo festivals were rites of expiation and purification, and the shabattu also are distinguished as such. The calendar also shews a second trace of connexion with Asia Minor. Besides Apollo there is only one deity, Hecate, that is closely connected with the calendar and the superstition of the days of the month, and it has been proved that this goddess too originated in Asia Minor[1198].