Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

vi] Lunar and Solar Years 189
In Athens, in the days of Porphyry, and it may be long before,
the Horae and Helios had a procession together in which was
carried the Eiresione, the branch decked with wool and himg with
cakes and fruits. By that time men knew that the Sun had
power over the Seasons ; but at first the Horae were linked with
an earlier potency, and it is to this earlier potency that they owe
their three-ness. The three Horae are the three phases of the
Moon, the Moon waxing, full and waning. After the simple
seasonal year with its two divisions came the Moon-Year with
three, and last the Sun-Year with four Horae 1
.
In the third jEneid, when iEneas and his men are weather-
bound at Actium, they have as usual athletic contests to pass the
time. Vergil 2 says
Interea magnum sol circumvolvitur annum.
Scholars translate the passage ' meantime the sun rounds the
great circle of the year'; but if we take the words literally it is
the year that is qualified as great, and we are justified in supposing
that if there is a great year there is also a small one, a parvus
annus. Such in fact there is, and so Servius in commenting
understands the passage. ' He (i.e. Vergil) says magnus in addition
lest we should think he means a lunar year. For the ancients
computed their times by the heavenly bodies, and at first they
called a period of 30 days a lunar year'
'
Year,' annus, is of
course only a ring, a revolution. ' Later,' Servius goes on, ' the
year of the solstices was discovered, which contains twelve
months.'
The great calendar crux of antiquity was the fitting together
of this old Moon-Year with the new Sun-Year. Into this problem
and the various solutions of trieteric and pentaeteric 'years' we
need not enter 3 . It is enough for our purpose to realize that the
Moon is the true mother of the triple Horae, who are themselves
Moirae, and the Moirae, as Orpheus 4 tells us, are but the three
1 See Abst. II. 7 oh fiaprvpeiu eoiKev Kal -q ' Ad-qvri