Ancient Chronography

The historian’s apparent obsession with dates arises not from a passion for trivia but from the fact that “the study of history is a study of causes” (Carr 1987: 87). Establishing which events came first and which occurred later is an essential first step in determining whether or not a causal relationship exists between them. This is not to say that because a certain event succeeds another, it is necessarily a consequence of it: an old historical adage warns against the assumption post hoc ergo propter hoc (literally, “after this and therefore on account of this”). On the other hand, it is no good positing that an event is the cause of another if it is patently clear that it came after, not before, it. For most practical purposes it would be sufficient merely to establish a relative sequence of events, though this is normally only possible if we know absolute dates by years and - where possible - months and days.

In most regions of ancient Greece, the year was divided into twelve lunar months (Figure 2.1), though the names of these months varied from city to city, as did the conventions governing how years were reckoned. Generally speaking, the political systems of most Greek states, democratic or oligarchic, were characterized to some degree by the principle of rotation of political office and each year was named after the most important magistrate who presided in that period. At Sparta the senior of the five annually-elected ephors (“overseers”) gave his name to the year while of the nine archons (“rulers”) at Athens, the highest ranking was known as the “eponymous archon” because it was his name that was recorded in connection with events that occurred during his tenure of office. So, for example, the Parian Marble, an inscribed table of events set up on the Cycladic island of Paros in the mid-third century, says that the Pisistratid tyrants of Athens had been expelled from the city 248 years earlier “when the archon at Athens was Harpaktides” (Fornara 1A). Since the archons assumed

Figure 2.1 List of months at Athens, Miletus, Rhodes, and Epidaurus (n. b. the year began in mid-summer)

Their duties in the summer, Greek years are often given a double notation - in this case, 511/10.

A list of archons was set up in the Athenian agora ca. 425. Today, all that survives of it are four fragments of marble on which the names of known archons of the sixth and early fifth centuries are recorded (ML 6 = Fornara 23), though it is normally assumed that the inscription originally carried the names of all the archons stretching back to 683/2 - the year in which, according to the Parian Marble, archons were appointed on an annual basis rather than for ten-year terms. It is possible that the inscription “updated” earlier lists of archons but other indications suggest that the Greeks only really acquired an interest in chronography towards the end of the fifth century (see below). Presumably, the custom of recording the eponymous archon for each year became regular thereafter, meaning that we can be fairly confident about events dated to archon years subsequent to ca. 425. It is also reasonable to suppose that the names of archons and the order in which they held office over the previous two, and perhaps even three, generations was a matter of public memory. Beyond that, however, it is difficult to know how credible our information is. The compiler of the list might have come across informants who had reason to believe that their great-grandfather had been eponymous archon 140 years earlier but, in the absence of official lists, such testimony would surely have been unverifiable. The fact that the name Kreon - traditionally recorded as the first of the annually appointed archons - is a synonym for “archon” hardly dispels such suspicions.

Another way of reckoning years was by major Panhellenic festivals. Aristotle and his nephew Callisthenes were said to have compiled a register of victors at the Pythian Games of Delphi in the third quarter of the fourth century. Still earlier, towards the end of the fifth century, the sophist Hippias of Elis published a list of those who had won the stadion (the 200 meter race) at each Olympic festival, stretching back to the supposed first Olympic Games of 776. Hippias’ list has not survived but it is widely believed that it was used for the early part of a list of Olympic victors from 776 to 211 CE, recorded by the third-century CE Christian philosopher Sextus Julius Africanus and preserved in the Chronicle of Eusebius, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea. As in the case of the Athenian archons, Africanus’ list implies that victories were regularly recorded from the time of Hippias onwards but it is less clear how much credibility should be given to Hippias’ original list. We can assume fundamental accuracy for the fifth-century and perhaps even late sixth-century victors and it is entirely possible that it was easier to remember that a family member had won the stadion thirty-five Olympiads ago than that he had been archon 140 years earlier. It is, however, difficult to believe that all of the names in Hippias’ list rest on unimpeachable testimony and many doubt whether the Olympic Games were really as ancient as Hippias pretended - especially since the other great Panhellenic games at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea were only organized formally in the early sixth century. Even Plutarch (Num. 1), whose anecdotes are too often and too uncritically employed to write the history of the Archaic period, was skeptical about the veracity of Hippias’ work.

A third way of dating events to years was by the tenure of religious office. This is the method that was adopted by a contemporary of Hippias, Hellanicus of Mytilene, for his Hiereiai - a chronicle of historical events organized according to the successive years of office served by the priestess at the sanctuary of Hera outside Argos. Only around eleven fragments, all references by later authors, have survived of this originally three-volume work but there is reason to believe that Hellanicus provided a series of synchronisms that anchored his chronological scheme both to the Athenian archon list and to the Spartan list of ephors. Indeed, it is sometimes claimed that it was Hellanicus who was responsible for the publication of the Athenian archon list ca. 425. Either way, it was almost certainly on Hellanicus’ Hiereiai that Thucydides (2.2.1) drew when he wrote that the Peloponnesian War broke out “when Khrysis had held the priestess-hood at Argos for forty-eight years and Ainesios was ephor at Sparta and when there were still two months remaining of the archonship of Pytho-doros at Athens” (431 in our terms). Surprisingly, perhaps, these lists of officials were not synchronized with the Olympic victors lists until the beginning of the third century. According to Polybius (12.11.1), it was the Sicilian historian Timaeus of Tauromenium who first matched the Olympic victors lists to the lists of Argive priestesses, Spartan ephors, and Athenian archons though dating by Olympiads was not truly exploited until the chronographic works of Eratosthenes of Cyrene later in the century.

The synchronisms established by Hellanicus, Timaeus, and Eratosthenes only produced correspondences between relative chronological systems. Three further developments were required before ancient reckonings of years could be translated into our modern western chronological scheme (based on Pope Gregory XIII’s modification of the Julian calendar in 1582 CE, though the “Gregorian Calendar” was not introduced in Britain or America until 1752). The first, achieved by Eusebius in his Chronika, was the synchronism of Olympiads with both the Hebrew system of dating by years “after Abraham” and the Roman annalistic traditions of years that had elapsed since the city of Rome had been founded (ab urbe condita). This work only exists today in a fragmentary Byzantine Greek edition, an Armenian edition, and a Latin translation undertaken by Jerome in the early fifth century CE, and unfortunately these different versions do not always furnish the same date. The second was the calculation by the sixth-century Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus that 248 years had elapsed since the Roman emperor Diocletian had come to power and that 532 years had passed ab incarnatione Domini (“from the incarnation of the lord” - i. e. since the birth of Christ). Working backwards from a base line of 532 CE, Diocletian’s reign would therefore have begun in 284 CE. The third was the extension, in the early seventeenth century, of Dionysius Exiguus’ calculations back into the pre-common era by the French Jesuit theologian Dionysius Petavius. Since Diocletian was acclaimed emperor 1,037 years after the date Varro assigns for the foundation of Rome, then Rome was founded in 753. And since Rome was said to have been founded in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, then the first Olympic Games took place in 776.

It is worth pointing out that, since all chronographic systems are to a certain degree arbitrary and conventional, the accuracy or even historicity of Christ’s birth is irrelevant. Had Dionysius Exiguus decided to rename the 248th year of the Diocletianic era, say, year nine of the papacy of John I, the basic chronological scheme would not be affected. The first Olympic Games would still have been dated 1,308 years earlier and the foundation of Rome would still have been dated twenty-three years after that. The uncertainties that arise derive not from the chronographic system in itself but from the credibility of the dates that are assigned to events. For example, we are on firm ground when Pausanias (10.2.1) dates the Phocian capture of Delphi to “the fourth year of the 105th Olympiad, when Proros of Cyrene won the stadion” (357/6 in our calendar). But when, elsewhere (4.15.1), he dates the outbreak of the Second Messenian War to the fourth year of the twenty-third Olympiad (685), we are entitled to wonder how reliable this date is, given that it predates the compilation of the Olympic victors lists by more than two and a half centuries. Furthermore, the synchronisms that were established in the later fifth century only really work if the Olympic Games were held without fail every four years or if magistrates always succeeded one another on an annual basis. There are some indications that this was not always the case and, unless such aberrations were explicitly noted in the registers, the correlations between different chronological schemes in their earlier phases would be less secure. As a general rule of thumb, it is probably prudent to regard with some suspicion all precise calendar dates prior to the middle of the sixth century.