Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Space and Time 49
Hesiod scores top marks for the precision of his time-reckoning
code and for his observation of the natural world. To quote the
archaeo-astronomer Antony Aveni (Empires of Time, 48 ): “Hesiod’s
calendar codifies the association of celestial rhythms with the
biorhythms present in all living things since their beginning. His
scheme is intricate and rich in detail in its predictive power . . . and
his astronomic timings and crosschecks are . . . as accurate as any
time-marking scheme, using these events, that can be written
down.”
Reckoning the Years
There was no universal method of reckoning the passage of years
in the Greek world. Rather, each community adhered to its own
idiosyncratic system. So when Thukydides wishes to indicate the
year in which the Peloponnesian War broke out, he tells his readers
that hostilities began “fourteen years after the capture of Euboia,
forty-seven years after Chryses became priestess of Hera at Argos,
in the year when Ainesias was ephor at Sparta, and in the year
when Pythodoros was archon in Athens” (2.1.1).
The earliest preserved date in Greek history is 776 b.c.e. , when the
Olympic Games were first celebrated. However, Olympiads, which
marked the four-year intervals between successive celebrations of
the games, were not adopted as a basis for chronology until the
third century b.c.e. Nor did all city-states seek to establish the year
of their foundation. What they were primarily interested in proving
was that their city had been founded earlier than their rivals,
because this could lend legitimacy to territorial claims.
Athens’s written records begin in 683 b.c.e. , when it instituted
a system by which a magistrate known as the eponymous archon
gave his name to the year. There was nothing else significant about
this date. It merely marked the adoption of a procedural convenience.
Moreover, although the Athenians annually celebrated the
birthday of their principal state deity, Athene Polias, on the 28th of
the month of Hekatombaion (i.e., shortly after the summer solstice),
they did not know the year in which the goddess had been born.
They also held a festival called the Synoikia earlier in the month in
commemoration of the synoikismos or unification of Attica, which
they ascribed to their legendary king Theseus. However, because
Theseus’s reign could not be dated, this event did not provide a
fixed date either. It was not until the Hellenistic Period that a determined
attempt was made to establish a foundation date for Athens.