Manipulation of The Calendar
The Attic calendar was determined on the ground, month by month and year by year, in the light of immediate concerns, political or military. It was in the control of magistrates who were not astronomers. How heavy-handed this interference was is controversial. Some scholars believe that if a festival date fell on a day needed for an assembly meeting, then an extra day could be inserted by simply repeating the same day name twice.
There is clear evidence that this was practised later. In Athens in 271 BC just before the Great Dionysia four days were inserted between Elaphebolion 9 and 10, putting the calendar on hold. Presumably this was to gain extra rehearsal time for the festival with its performances of tragedy and comedy. A similar story comes from the 5th century BC, but at Argos: the Argives, launching a punitive expedition in the shadow of the holy month of Karneios when fighting was banned, decided to freeze the calendar to get some extra days of war in. However their allies rejected this rearrangement and went home.
Aristophanes' Clouds, a comedy from 423 BC, contains a speech where a complaint is brought from the moon: the Athenians have been playing round with the months, "running them up and down" so that human activity and the divine order are completely out of kilter. "When you should be holding sacrifices, instead you are torturing and judging." A situation is known to have applied in the 2nd century BC where the festival calendar was so out of sync with the actual cycles of the moon that the lunisolar date was sometimes given under two headings, one "according to the god", meaning apparently the moon, and the other "according to the archon", meaning the festival calendar itself.
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