Days of the Week

[Lucus Eques]

How did the Ancient Greeks indicate the days of the week? I'm familiar with the Modern Greek custom; in Latin, they are litterally die Solis, "on the day of the Sun," die Lunae, "on the day of the Moon," etc.

[Arvid]

I don't think the Ancient Mediterranean civilizations were familiar with the seven-day week until they were heavily influenced by Persian ideas after Alexander. The early Romans had an eight-day week; I don't know when they adopted the Hellenistic week and adapted the names for the days. It would have to be after the Roman gods were "interpreted" into their supposed equivalents in the Greek Pantheon.

This Seven mysticism is not native to the Indo-European worldview to begin with; I read a theory once that the Indo-Iranian tribes, on their swing around the Caspian and back south, picked it up from its native territory among the Ural-Altaic peoples. Supposedly it's inspired by the seven stars of the Big Dipper.

[ThomasGR]

I had this curiosity also, long long time ago. I do not remember much at this moment other that Sunday was "Ηλίου" (of the sun) and Wednesday "των θεών" (of the gods). Influenced by Phoenicians, Persians and Egyptians, they adopted at a very early stage the 7-day-week and names of the planets. Later, they were influenced by the Hebrew customs, that’s counting the days (except for Sunday and Saturday). Prior to this I don’t think they had any divisions of their calendar into Weeks (or even months?), other than epochs. It’s interesting what wikipedia has to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_cale ... _the_month

[Arvid]

Well, surely everything one would want to know on the subject must be in one or the other of the SIX volumes (!!) of: Origines Kalendarlae hellenicae, or The history of the primitive calendar among the Greeks, before and after the legislation of Solon by Edward Greswell, that just appeared on the Internet Archive. I get 4400-some pages all told. I'm too stupefied to even start downloading it, but perhaps there are hardier souls in the group. The first volume is at: http://www.archive.org/details/origines ... 01gresuoft And just substitute 02-06 for the other volumes. Perhaps you couldn't tell I was flabbergasted; so I'll tell you: I'm flabbergasted!

[Lucus Eques]

Thanks! I too am flabbergasted.

[Bob Manske]

I was able to download the even numbered volumes of Greswell's work, but not the odd numbered ones. The page which allows you to download the volume never completes loading.
The three volumes I have been able to get are amazing!

[Arvid]

The page which allows you to download the volume never completes loading.

Internet Archive has been having a lot of problems lately. When I found this, I looked at the page for volume 1, then looked at a couple more, and then when I tried to get back volume 1, I couldn't. This is after they'd been offline completely for a few days. So my advice is to keep trying, they'll probably eventually fix the problem.

[AABaker]

I am under the impression that each Greek city-state had it's own system of months. Wouldn't that have effected how they marked days as well?

[jk0592]

I finally was able to download all six volumes in pdf of "Origines Kalendarlae hellenicae, or The history of the primitive calendar among the Greeks, before and after the legislation of Solon" by Edward Greswell. It looks like a very learned document. Downloading volume 5 was so slow that I had to resort to using the command line "curl" to get it, and it took almost 8 hours just for this one volume.

Now that they are backed up, and entered into my ancient greek EndNote system, I will create bookmarks for each of these books as soon as I have some free time, and then i might read a few chapters.

The table of contents is mainly divided into dissertations...

[Bob Manske]

Last night I downloaded volumes 1 and 3 fine. Volume 5 didn't want to come. Tonight I tried it again and got all 47mb in a few minutes. So apparently they've straightened out their problems.
For now.

It's nice to have all 6. What a work it is!

[jk0592]

yes, downloading them was a real pain.

Perhaps reading them will more than compensate, but it looks like a fairly involved work.

[Lukas]

Χαίρετε!

I was wondering about the days of the week today also. I wonder if posters would agree with this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_ ... _tradition

[Constantinus Philo]

it was complicated, they did not know the week but counted in dekadas, for more details, see appendix to Bailly's greek french dictionary.

[Lukas]

One of the Athenian calendars started the new moon after the summer solstice. Were the Athenians in classical times able to tell when the solstice was?

[seneca2008]

Yes Meton (who appears in Aristophanes' Birds (992-1019) ) carried out some observations and worked out a 19 year cycle. See Hannah, Robert Greek and Roman calendars , 2005, Duckworth.

This is also interesting from Bilić Tomislav , Apollo, Helios, and the Solstices in the Athenian, Delphian, and Delian Calendars, Numen , 2012, Vol. 59, No. 5/6 (2012), pp. 509-532, Brill

Tomislav Bilić

Show

[jeidsath]

Finding the solstice is easy, as it's halfway between the equinoxes. You can count days or use tickmarks on the horizon or count from the the first rise of certain stars. Hesiod, for example, mentions the first rise of Arcturus 60 days after the winter solstice. Even neolithic farmers knew when the solstice and equinoxes were.

Meton's achievement was to predict where these would fall in relation to the lunar calendar. That's somewhat trickier. The public calendar, I would guess, would have relied on simple observational rules, not Meton's mathematics: look for the first new moon after solstice, etc.

(It is very difficult to find the solstice observationally from the sun's declination, hence the need for dead reckoning from the equinox, either in days, or degrees along the horizon.)