Introduction
With the New Year approaching fast, you may be reflecting on this past year and all events that have taken place. Going back thousands of years, you may be surprised to discover that both the Greeks and the Romans would be doing the same. Not only was this a marked event but one that encompassed astrology, religion and festivities. So while you’re having fun thinking of resolutions, hopefully this post will allow you to appreciate the rich cultural heritage that comes with this celebration.
Ancient Greece- New year festivities
The custom of marking the beginning of the New Year is at least 4,000 years old and has its roots in ancient Babylon in Mesopotamia whose pagan customs were passed on to Ancient Greece. Before this contact, ancient Greeks were not known to celebrate the New Year other than marking the “sickle of the new moon”, recognising the visible new moon as the beginning of each new month. They practiced this custom in honor of Selene, Apollo Noumenios, Hestia and the other household gods, also known as noumenia.
However, sources tell of a religious ceremony which took place on the last day of the outgoing year. The celebration was in fact a sacrifice made by the outgoing officials of the city, which they would offer to Zeus and Athena to ensure the blessings and favor of the two gods for the coming new year. In classical Greece, every city-state (polis) used its own calendar, with different names of the months, beginnings of the year, and intercalations, or insertions of extra time periods.
Ancient Greece- Calendar
The Greeks used lunisolar calendars with years of 12 or 13 months and 354 days. A month could be considered “hollow” or “full,” having either 29 or 30 days respectively. Periodically an extra month had to be inserted, or intercalated, to keep the calendar in line with the circuit of the seasons.
Athenians, especially from the 3rd Century BC forward, could consult any one of five separate “calendars:” Olympiad, Seasonal, Civil, Conciliar, and finally Metonic – depending on what event or type of event they wished to chronical.
The Olympiad Calendar did not calculate dates in the modern sense as it does not count days nor even months but only years. Greek historians devised the Olympiad Calendar to provide a common frame of reference when reconciling historical events recorded by the local calendars of various poleis. This calendar became popular with later historical writers like Diodorus. The Olympiad Calendar used the athletic games held at Olympia every four years to render an acceptable common count of passing years. The four years between those successive games constituted one Olympiad. The Ancient Greeks, including Athenians, thus numbered their years first by noting the succession of the Olympic Games celebrated and then tallied the individual years until the next celebration.
Ancient Athenians also make reference to a Seasonal Calendar, the παράπηγμα (parapegma). Unlike the Olympiad Calendar, however, the Seasonal Calendar did not calculate dates in successive years but rather noted specific visible astronomical events within a given year. Catalogued for centuries by various astronomers, parapegmata recorded a list of seasonally recurring weather changes in relation to the first and last appearances of stars or constellations alongside solar events like equinoxes and solstices along with the phases of the moon. The primary need for a Seasonal Calendar emerged, because Ancient Greeks needed to mark the beginning of weather changes to regulate certain human activities such as agriculture, navigation, and warfare.
Athenians used the Civil calendar primarily to regulate the numerous Athenian festivals throughout a given year. Athenians divided their festivals into two types: approximately 80 annually recurring celebrations and then sets of monthly festivities clustered around the beginning of each synodic month. The Twelve Athenian Civil Lunar months (in order) were:
Hekatombaion
Metageitnion
Boidromion
Pyanopsion
Maimakterion
Poseidon
Gamelion
Anthesterion
Elaphebolion
Mounikhion
Thargelion
Skirophorion
Ancient Rome- New Year festivities
As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year: Janus, the Roman god of change and beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. This idea became tied to the concept of transition from one year to the next. Janus’ name means "gate" or "door" and in times of war the gates of his temple were kept open and in peacetime they were barred. Romans would celebrate January 1st by offering sacrifices to Janus in the hope of gaining good fortune for the New Year, decorating their homes with laurel branches and attending raucous parties. It was not until ancient Roman times, and while Rome was growing in power, that New Year festivities began to become extremely popular. A celebration known as Saturnalia, a time of reveling, drinking bouts, orgies and human sacrifice in honor of the god Saturn, was instituted as the festival of January 1st by Julius Caesar.The popularity of the orgiastic celebration of Saturnalia spread to all corners of the Roman Empire and continued to integrate, with local alterations, into the existing customs of all peoples within the Empire’s boundaries, including those of ancient Greece.
Ancient Rome- Calendar
The Roman New Year also originally corresponded with the vernal equinox (When the Sun is exactly above the equator). The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months and 304 days, with each new year beginning at the vernal equinox. According to tradition, the calendar was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century B.C. However, over the centuries, the calendar fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the general Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem by consulting with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the Julian calendar, a solar-based calendar which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most countries around the world use today.
Conclusion
And so, while the Ancient Greek calendars of weather or astrology may not seem as similar to the modern day as the Julian calendar, each still plays a crucial role in our documentation of events be it astrological or regarding festivites. We may not use the parapegma, but we still have weather forecasts and still follow the distinction of the games in the calendar like the Olympiad. So if you’re celebrating this year whether that be making a sacrifice to Zeus or simply heading out to a raucous party, think about this time of new beginnings!
Until next year ;)
Viola and Zoe.