Attic Calendar - Festival Calendar - Names of The Months

Names of The Months

The first function of this calendar was to set the days for the religious festivals. These festivals, in a county fair role, encompassed a much broader range of activities than the word "religious" suggests, and were central to the life of the city.

The Athenian months were named after gods and festivals. In this the calendar differed from the Mesopotamian models that lie behind all Greek lunar calendars. In the Sumerian and Babylonian prototypes, for instance, the months were named after the main agricultural activity practised in that month. Many Athenian festivals did have links with different stages of the agricultural cycle, such as festivals of planting or harvest. This perhaps added to the need to keep lunar and solar calendars roughly aligned, though this was not always achieved. The year of farmers, however, was not the primary focus of the calendar.

Jane Ellen Harrison, in treating the Attic festivals in Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), noted at the outset that some, though not all of the festivals gave their name to the month in which they were celebrated, and that with the one exception of the Dionysia, none of the festivals were directly named for Olympians, or indeed, for any divinities (Harrison, p 30).

At Athens month six, Poseideon, took its name directly from the god Poseidon. More commonly, the god appears in the form of a cult title. (A cult title is the name or aspect under which a god was worshipped at a particular festival.) Examples are Maimakterion, named after Zeus ("the rager") and Metageitnion, after Apollo as helper of colonists.

Of all of the months, only the eighth, Anthesterion, was named directly after the major festival celebrated in its month, the Anthesteria. While the month-naming festivals of Pyanepsia, Thargelia and Skira were relatively important, some of the grandest celebrations in the life of the city are not recognised in the name of the month. Examples are the Great Dionysia held in Elaphebolion (month 9) and the Panathenaia are only indirectly recognised in Hekatombaion (month 1), named after the hekatombe, the sacrifice of a "hundred oxen" held on the final night of the Panathenaia. More often than not, the festival providing the month name is minor or obsolete. For instance, the second month, Metageitnion, is named after a cult title of the god Apollo, but there is no trace of a festival bearing the name. The same goes for months 5 and 6, Maimakterion and Poseideon.

The calendars of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor (along the western coastline modern Turkey) often share month names with Athens. For instance, at Miletos four of the same month names were in use, namely Thargelion, Metageitnion, Boedromion and Pyanepsion, and the last of these even occupied the same position as month four in both communities. Traditionally, these Ionian cities were founded by colonists from Attica (perhaps around 1050 BC). It may be then that the Athenian month names refer to a festival schedule some hundreds of years out of date.

Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around the beginning of each month. These were often the birthdays of gods, the Greeks thinking of birthdays as a monthly rather than a yearly recurrence. Every month days 1-4 and 6-8 were all sacred to particular gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days a year:

• Day 1: New Moon
• Day 2: Agathos Daimon
• Day 3: Athena's Birthday
• Day 4: Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite and Eros

• Day 6: Artemis' Birthday
• Day 7: Apollo's Birthday
• Day 8: Poseidon and Theseus (Mikalson 1975: 24)

Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days. This means that every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations, while in the body of each month there was a unique schedule of festival days.

A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted. This practice is not still currently in use.