pothos.org

THE DATE OF THE DEATH OF PHILIP II AND ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER III THE GREAT.

Well, I see my prediction has proved only too accurate. In my resolve to get off this treadmill and cease posting, I was prepared to let this post go unanswered, despite disagreeing with its content, and despite its errors of fact. Once again however, you have succeeded in ‘goading’me onto a path I am loath to follow, most notably in claiming to “clear some of the obfuscation” when in fact you achieve the exact opposite! So, since I have to deal with an important chronology point anyway, I might as well respond to this too.

Agesilaos wrote:

“It is you who have consistently failed to get the point; your assertion, in case you have forgotten, is that the computed base date of the Kallippic Cycle, 28th June 330 BC, and the Co-incidence of the Macedonian and Babylonian calendars in 323 proves that the calendars were brought into alignment between those years, despite all the writers on the matter, including Samuel p 141, going no further than to say that the alignment must have occurred before Alexander’s death.”

That is unfortunately a misrepresentation of my position, which in fact is largely the same as Samuel and ‘communis opinio.’I wrote as recently as Jan 7:
“The synchronous months of Alexander’s death ONLY prove that by 323, the Babylonian and Macedonian calendars had been made to co-incide – perfectly logical now that all belonged to a single Empire.”

As I emphasised, there is only absolute proof that by 323, the two calendars were synchronous.

However, there IS clear circumstantial evidence that points to a date post 331 BC for the calendars to become aligned.

1.Prior to 331 and the battle of Gaugemala, when it became clear that Alexander would rule the Persian empire, there was no rational reason for Macedon to adopt a calendar from far-away Babylon, and as far as is known no Greek state did, despite knowledge of it filtering through to at least Athens by the 5 C BC, and the consequent invention of the so-called 'Metonic cycle'.

2. Prior to the reign of Philip and the importation of learned Greeks by him, unlike other 'civilised' Greek states, Macedon was a rather uncouth place with no scholarly tradition, and hence no 'Meton' to interpret Babylonian Astronomical observations.

3. Only after Alexander's conquest was there a need to have a single synchronous calendar throughout his domains, hence the merger of the Macedonian with the similar luni-solar based Babylonian calendar ( the Persian 365 day solar calendar was clearly unsuitable).

4. Calippus, Aristotle and others are all proven to have the knowledge of Babylonian Astronomical data c. 330 BC.

The logical, if not proven, conclusion is that the adoption took place some time between 330 and 323......

“Samuel himself says that the alignment may have meant no more than ‘making permanent the relationships as they stood when Alexander took Babylon.’ Which means that the Macedonian calendar must have shared its system of intercalations with the Babylonian before Alexander took Babylon.”

That does not necessarily follow at all.....even if true it only shows synchronocity no earlier than 331, which may itself be co-incidental ....after all, both were lunar based calendars, and they worked by observations of the same moon!!

Chris Bennett’s interpretation of the timing of Alexander’s death, in the afternoon rather than after sunset

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/Egypt/ptole ... ealogy.htm

Since you are familiar with Chris Bennett’s work, you appear to have overlooked a rather important point, which I will come to when responding to your ‘obfuscation’ post......

Agesilaos wrote:

The calendars may have actually been a day apart in 323 and still based on independent observation, so the alignment did ante-date Alexander’s arrival and no adjustment had been made to either; the system of intercalations, must have been the same, however.

Xenophon wrote: The fact that the Callipus' refinement commences 330 BC, after the fall of Babylon, gives the approximate year in which the data from the Babylonian Astronomical diaries was received and worked on in Macedon and Athens.

Macedon? Which source places Kallippos in Macedon? Even Aristotle was in Athens at this time, somewhere it says some of the measurements used were taken at the Hellespont (Thrace), but since many more were from Babylon there is nothing to say the measurements Kallippos used in his calculations were taken by Kallippos himself. Though as a native of Kyzikos it would be more likely to place the Hellespontine observations there rather than in Macedon.

Except that in 330 BC and thereabouts, the island city of Cyzicus( as it then was) was technically part of Macedon, Alexander having taken it from the Persians in 334 BC.......

Xenophon wrote:Moreover, these calendars were astronomical ones, at least at first, and not in common use. Clearly it is some time between 330 and 323 that the Babylonian and Macedonian calendars are made to coincide.

Non-sequitur, evidence for the general alignment of the Macedonian and Babylonian calendars pre-dates the start date of Kallippos’ ‘tweak’. See above on the date of Gaugamela. If Bennett is right then the calendars were not ‘aligned’ in any case.

I don't know what evidence you are referring to. Your assertion that the Macedonian and Persian/Babylonian calendars were aligned from the two very short periods of Persian ‘influence’ in the Days of Darius I and Xerxes has no evidence whatsoever, as previously pointed out and is an ‘ad ignorandum’ type argument, therefore illogical. The most likely form of calendar in Macedon, like all others in Greece, is a lunisolar one consisting of 12‘hollow’ 29 day months and ‘full’ 30 day months ( which type was decided by observation at the time). One pointer in this regard is its approximate equivalence with the Attic civil festival calendar of the time.....
BTW, the Persian calendar, at least circa 330 BC, was NOT the Babylonian lunisolar one [354 days aprox], but a solar one, probably Zoroastrian, of 365 days, as we are told in passing by Curtius [III.3.10 and III.3.24; also indirectly Diod XVII.77.6]

Xenophon wrote:“Around that time Aristotle used the work of Callipus, who modified Aristotles 27 spheres to 34, to revise his own work.”

This is unreferenced and at odds with Aristotle’s own words in the quote you, dubbed ‘irrelevant’ earlier, and then pretended that it was your failure to give an accurate reference to Strabo that was the issue. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII 1073b-1074a has 55 spheres.

Please re-read my post on Dec 31, which you have quoted here, referring to Aristotle’s revisions concerning the number of spheres in his cosmological model. Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’cosmological ‘spheres’ began with Eudoxus’26 spheres, then incorporated the work of Callipus to 33/34 spheres, and in its final developed form he had increased the number to 47 or 55 spheres [ see e.g.Aristotle, Metaphysics 1073b1–1074a13, pp. 882–883 quoted in "The Basic Works of Aristotle" Richard McKeon, ed., The Modern Library 2001] – and no thank you, I don’t want to digress onto the subject of Aristotle’s cosmological models !

It is the seven intercalations in a nineteen year cycle that make a system ‘Metonic’ in the sense used by Merritt who emphatically says that the Civil calendar was regular and Metonic, and constantly repeating your own misunderstanding will not affect Merritt’s clear statement.

I take it you mean this one, quoted in my post of 31 Dec: “This was done because of a conviction which Meritt held in 1964 that the dates were specifically Metonic dates. He and Traill have come to believe that a "regular," untampered, festival calendar was often accurate enough, astronomically, to be in effect the same as the Metonic. [ i.e. just as accurate for practical purposes] But the known divergences of dates from the Metonic norm show that the festival dates were not ipso facto Metonic dates.”[p.161/162]
....and he then goes on to explain the evidence as to why the Athenian calendar was not Metonic.”

For the third time, not in fact Metonic, and see Merritt’s tables showing the vast majority were clearly not ‘Metonic’in the technical sense ( as can be seen from your quotation below) and the few that are ‘Metonic’ are likely purely co-incidental – though the matter is the subject of debate. They are at best ‘Metonic’ in an artificial generic sense, with moderns applying the ’19 year cycle’ but as can be seen the inter-calary months were added largely ‘ad hoc’.

‘With these changes it will be seen that the years 128/7 to 91/0, so far as there is evidence, conform exactly to the correct sequence of ordinary and intercalary years in the Metonic cycle. The correct sequence can now be observed, as far as there is evidence, in the fifth cycle (355/4 – 338/7), in the sixth cycle (337/6 – 319/8), in the seventh cycle (exept for two transpositions: in 318/7and 317/6 and in 307/6 and 306/5) (318/7 – 300/299, in the eighth and ninth cycles (200/8 – 262/1), and in the seventeenth and eighteenth cycles (128/7 – 91/0).’ P166

“Xenophon wrote:But not the civil archon calendar,”

The Civil Calendar is the fixed Prytanny calendar, the Archon Calendar the variable Festival one; QED.

I tried to make clear which calendar I was referring to, since nomenclature is far from uniform – the Athenian festival calendar is often referred to as the civil calendar e.g. by Christopher Planeaux in his interesting article on Attic calendars here:

http://www.ancient.eu/article/833/

....and which shows that the conciliar/prytany calendar was far from fixed !

edited to clarify a point

Re: ' The Date of king Philip II ‘s Death and Alexander III The Great’s Accession.'


Postby agesilaos » Wed Jan 13, 2016 2:32 pm

Just to tidy up, then, most points will have been self evident but just to clear some of the obfuscation.

As I said earlier, this post simply serves to create obfuscation ! Despite the fact that the arithmetic (inter alia) shows that Philip’s death/Alexander’s accession definitely did not occur in Macedonian month Dios ( roughly October, the Macedonian New Year) of 336/335 BC [modern], you now turn to yet another way of reckoning time, namely the Macedonian Regnal year. Unfortunately once again your method of calculation is in error, it would appear, which certainly serves to ‘obfuscate’ matters !

Xenophon wrote: Gaugamela is NOT securely dated to a date of 1 Oct , rather only to the last month of the Macedonian year, which means that he had to have acceded before ‘Dios/October 336’, as I pointed out in my previous post.

Daisios 336-Daisios 335 =1st year
Daisios 335-Daisios 334 = 2nd
Daisios 334-Daisios 333= 3rd year
Daisios 333-Daisios 332 =4th year
Daisios 332-Daisios 331 =5th year
Daisios 331-Daisios 330 = 6th year; Hyperberetaios 331 in this year.

It seems you are following Hammond in “The Regnal Years of Philip and Alexander”, which you referred to earlier, wherein he says :
“When we take all these arguments together, it seems certain that Philip was killed not in summer but in autumn 336; that the date of his death was 24 Dius, the first month of the Macedonian year 336/335; that Alexander succeeded to the throne in that first month; and that Alexander's first regnal year was the Macedonian year 336/335. This last point confirms, at least in this instance, the belief of Meyer (s upra n.16: II 443) that the year of a king's death counts not as his regnal year but as the regnal year of his successor.”

Your first error in your basis of calculation is that a ‘regnal year’ begins with the King’s actual date of accession.( imagine the chaos with every King's 'regnal years' being different! ) In fact a ‘regnal year’ always co-incided with the actual year i.e. Dios/October to Dios/October, and so one can’t count regnal years from Daisios to Daisios. This first calculation of yours is therefore incorrect, and must be disregarded.

Secondly, Hammond/Meyer are unfortunately mistaken in assuming that a part-year counted as the first regnal year of the dead King's successor, i.e. an ‘ante-dating system’. As Christopher Bennett has demonstrated, while the Ptolemaic/Egyptian regnal year system worked this way, the Macedonian and Seleucid systems were ‘post dated’ i.e. the part year of a King’s death counted as his final regnal year.
As Christopher Bennett states:
“However, it is clear that the list uses a convention that annexes partial years, and that the partial year annexed is normally the remainder of the year in which the king died, even though it was often recorded that the reign ended part way through the year -- i.e. that the reigns are postdated.”

...and his tables here show:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptole ... yry_fr.htm

... see also T Boiy ‘Between High and Low’ pp 85 ff

Thus, even though Philip almost certainly died in Spring 336 BC, probably around Daisios, the remainder of the year to the end of Hyperberetaios/September 336 counted as Philip’s last regnal year, and Alexander’s first regnal year commenced 1st Dios/Oct aprox 336/335 BC [modern].

Your second table is thus right, but for the wrong reason ! In reality it is everything to do with the way Regnal years were reckoned/calculated, and nothing whatever to do with the actual date of accession/date of Philip’s death !

Dios 336-Dios 335 =1st year
Dios 335-Dios 334 = 2nd
Dios 334-Dios 333= 3rd year
Dios 333-Dios 332 =4th year
Dios 332-Dios 331 =5th year Hyperberetaios 331 in this year

Notwithstanding suggestions that the battle was fought the day after the eclipse, let us assume that it took place 11 days later, as the Babylonian chronicles and Plutarch [Alexander XXXI ] say, with Plutarch perhaps indirectly drawing on the chronicles here (and in “Camillus’ XIX.3 he gives the date of Gaugemala as 26th Boedromion/Sept aprox, again 1 Oct [modern]).

Arrian [III.15 ] says:
“Such was the result of this battle, which was fought in the archonship of Aristophanes at Athens, in the month Pyanepsion[sept/oct] ; and thus Aristander's prediction was accomplished, that Alexander would both fight a battle and gain a victory in the same month in which the moon was seen to be eclipsed.”
And Plutarch[Alexander XXXI]:
“ It so happened that in the month Boëdromion the moon suffered an eclipse, about the beginning of the Mysteries at Athens, and on the eleventh night after the eclipse, the armies being now in sight of one another, Dareius kept his forces under arms, and held a review of them by torch-light; but Alexander, while his Macedonians slept, himself passed the night in front of his tent with his seer Aristander, celebrating certain mysterious sacred rites and sacrificing to the god Fear.”

Hyperberetaios/September aprox roughly corresponds to the Attic Boedromion/ Pyanopsion, and we know the eclipse took place on 20th September [modern], and the first day of Boedromion can be calculated to be the 6th Sept[modern], so that the battle was fought on the 1st October[modern], which was still in Boedromion, which ended 5or 6 October [modern]. Thus basic Arithmetic, sources, astronomical data and Regnal Years are all consistent.

Strabo does not place the start of the voyage he describes in any regnal year; Niarchos places the start of the voyage from the mouths of the Indus in Alexander’s 11th regnal year.

I must confess I owe an apology to Arrian for suggesting he was “confused”about when the voyage commenced, through there being two years in succession when Nearchos departed in Boedromion [c.f. Strabo and Arrian]. As can be seen from the above, a simple calculation shows that 20 Boedromion 325 BC[Attic] would indeed be Hyperberetaios [Macedonian] aprox, the last month of Alexander’s 11th official Regnal Year ( which, let me repeat, had nothing to do with when he acceded to the throne on the death of Philip, almost certainly in the Spring of 336 BC, around Daisios/June or perhaps as late as July.)

John Yardley has clearly explained that he translated ’vulgus’ as ’host’, purely on his interpretation of the situation and NOT directly from the Latin.

I disagree.’Vulgus’ has many meanings and in a military context ‘host’ is clearly apt, ( see Perseus; Lewis and Short Latin dictionary for 'vulgus' as describing the mass of the common soldiery of Alexander's army "C. Militari gratiora vulgo, the common soldiery, Curt. 3, 6, 19: “vulgo militum acceptior,” id. 7, 2, 33 - clearly Yardley's translation is perfectly correct in a military context),and there can be no doubt in any event and on any translation that Justin has Alexander addressing Philip’s whole army, Macedonians and allies. Philip's whole army was therefore mustered and indicate his intention to commence the main invasion of the Persian Empire immediately following the celebrations ( a clear argument against October, late in the year). Let us have no more ‘red herrings’ over exact translations to distract from the major point here.

You define ‘Makedones’ but refuse to defend the definition, one is forced to assume that the usual usage of just ‘Macedonian’ is more than adequate; I find no justification for a more specialised usage.

Agesilaos wrote previously:

“Makedones/citizen-soldiers
How about evidencing this this equation, of which you seem so fond of just throwing out ‘alone and without’ a reference. Your distinction is false and would leave Justin scratching his head I’m sure. Or is there some, any, ancient evidence for this assertion?

...to which I responded....

"It is not an assertion, and the point of the expression is that there is no distinction. I’m not going to be drawn into yet another digression on the subject of "The ‘Makedones’ as citizen/soldiers and the Army assembly." If you want to discuss that subject, start a new thread so that interested people can readily find it, rather than burying it deep within this thread....... In any event there has already been plenty of general discussion on the subject.”

It is not I who originally defined the term ‘Makedones’ as meaning the soldiers/citizens of Macedonia. I think you will find it is accepted ‘communis opinio’. As to ancient evidence, try Diodorus[XVIII.16.1] where the ‘Makedones’ are ‘hoi basilikoi dynameis’/The Kings forces; or [XVII.109.1] where Alexander’s veterans are ‘politon/citizens’; or [XVIII.12.2] – the famous passage where Macedonia is described as being short of ‘stratiton politikon’/citizen-soldiers literally ( Though Macedon had plenty of manpower generally). For modern discussion see Hammond “Connotations of Macedonia and Macedones” or E.M. Anson’s “The meaning of the term Makedones".

That should give you “your starter for ten”. As for me, no further correspondence or discussion entered into – I have other fish to fry !!

There is nothing whatever in my interpretation that is ‘eccentric’, in fact since Bosworth’s Commentary came out it is communis opinion, with even Hammond agreeing; you will continue to dissent but without any argument in support.

That is yet another untrue statement. Bosworth notwithstanding, and Fears, together with Hammond’s late conversion are a minority of three, and as you will have read Hammond’s “Regnal Years” he says:
“There has also been disagreement about the time of Philip's death. The majority placed it in summer 336; Fears and Bosworth argued for October 336.”
And footnote p.358:
“That has been the orthodox view since K. J. B ELOCH (Griechische
Geschichte2 III.2 [Berlin 1923: hereafter 'Be loch'] 60); see for instance W. W.
Tarn, CAHl VI 269; J. R. Hamilton, Plutarch, Alexander: A Commentary
(Oxford 1969) 28; R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London 1973) 17; J. R.
Ellis, Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism (London 1976) 222, 306 n.53; G.
T. GRIFFITH, in N. G. L. Hammond and G. T. Griffith, A History of
Macedonia II (Oxford 1979: 'Griffith') 726 with 681 n.1; and my Alexander
the Great: King, Commander and Statesman (Atlantic Heights 19801; Bristol
19892: 'Hammond, AG') 37; G. Wirth, Philipp II (Stuttgart 1985) 66" ( while he changes his mind in this paper)

....to which can be added “ "Spring"[CAH 1927] to “June/July”,[Richard Gabriel] to “late Summer or early Fall”[Elizabeth Carney]”, as well as Christopher Bennett etc etc – see my post Dec 10.

As to "without any argument in support", that is just blatantly untrue, and quite preposterous, as anyone reading the last several thousand words will be aware. OTOH, you offer no evidence whatever for your postulation that Macedon adopted the Babylonian calendar in the 5 C BC ( and much else) .....that is sheer unsupported invention on your part, and that is part of the reason I regard your 'interpretation' of this subject to be eccentric......

In conclusion then, basic Arithmetic, sources, astronomical data and Regnal Years - however you care to approach the subject - are all consistent, when using proper factual information and correct calculations.

Philip could not have died in October [that is just Arithmetical error, inter alia], but as ALL the evidence shows, was assassinated in Spring 336 [modern]. Q.E.D

Re: ' The Date of king Philip II ‘s Death and Alexander III The Great’s Accession.'

POSTSCRIPT:

Agesilaos wrote:

Only Plutarch gives Loos 6th for Alexander’s birthday, which is at odds with both Aristoboulos’ date in Dios and the chronographer’s in Daisios.

It is highly probable that Plutarch's date is correct, and it is generally accepted over Justin's date , and the other two possibilities referred to in our sources.

For a detailed examination of this, and why the dates other than Plutarch's are highly unlikely, see the discussion within Chris Bennett's paper:
"Alexandria and the Moon:Addenda et Corrigenda " which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.academia.edu/1134799/Alexand ... Corrigenda.

Sorry, no further correspondence on the subject of Alexander's birthday entered into......

LOL! It is a pretty simple prediction, I have said countless times that if you write in error it will be corrected; and lo! It came to pass.

I should not have to explain what you have said to you but

“The synchronous months of Alexander’s death ONLY prove that by 323, the Babylonian and Macedonian calendars had been made to co-incide – perfectly logical now that all belonged to a single Empire.”

Clearly means that you are placing the co-incidence of the two calendars between October 331 and June 323, as this is the only time, ‘that all belonged to a single Empire’. This is different from a position which merely says that they were aligned ‘before Alexander’s death’, ie there is only the terminus ante quem not your post quem.

In fact,

As I emphasised, there is only absolute proof that by 323, the two calendars were synchronous.

May well not be the case. Had you read the Bennett link I supplied you would have found that the Greek term ‘deike’, which was formerly translated as ‘evening’ is more properly ‘late afternoon’, as specific as the ninth hour of daylight in Attica. This would mean that the date of the Diary, given by Plutarch, Alx 76.ix, as 28th Daisios for his death is a full day behind the date given by both Aristoboulos and the Astronomical Diary. It is not much of an alignment if it is 24 hrs out! No alignment means that the Macedonians probably adopted the Babylonian system of intercalations earlier than Alexander, something also indicated by the monthly alignment of the dates of Gaugamela 24 Ululu = late Hyperberetaios.

“Samuel himself says that the alignment may have meant no more than ‘making permanent the relationships as they stood when Alexander took Babylon.’ Which means that the Macedonian calendar must have shared its system of intercalations with the Babylonian before Alexander took Babylon.”

That does not necessarily follow at all.....even if true it only shows synchronocity no earlier than 331, which may itself be co-incidental ....after all, both were lunar based calendars, and they worked by observations of the same moon!!

Oh dear, you clearly still do not get it. Every luni-solar calendar observed the same moon yet patently they were not in alignment. Despite your continual assertions to the contrary, both Athens and Macedon operated a Metonic system of seven intercalary years in each set of nineteen but each chose different years in which to use the intercalary years. Weighting for a fairly even distribution of intercalary years there is a 1:972 chance of an alignment of intercalary years but the embolimic months are also synchronous which knocks the odds up to 1:11,664. Pretty remote then. Looking forward to the ‘rather important point’, I have missed.

Except that in 330 BC and thereabouts, the island city of Cyzicus( as it then was) was technically part of Macedon, Alexander having taken it from the Persians in 334 BC.......

By the same token Babylon was part of Macedonia in 331!! LOL None of these conquests was counted as being ‘technically part of Macedonia’, which is amply demonstrated by their persistence as satrapal units and Macedonia’s continued use as a specific territorial term. Keep clutching at them straws.

I don't know what evidence you are referring to. Your assertion that the Macedonian and Persian/Babylonian calendars were aligned from the two very short periods of Persian ‘influence’ in the Days of Darius I and Xerxes has no evidence whatsoever, as previously pointed out and is an ‘ad ignorandum’ type argument, therefore illogical. The most likely form of calendar in Macedon, like all others in Greece, is a lunisolar one consisting of 12‘hollow’ 29 day months and ‘full’ 30 day months ( which type was decided by observation at the time). One pointer in this regard is its approximate equivalence with the Attic civil festival calendar of the time.....
BTW, the Persian calendar, at least circa 330 BC, was NOT the Babylonian lunisolar one [354 days aprox], but a solar one, probably Zoroastrian, of 365 days, as we are told in passing by Curtius [III.3.10 and III.3.24; also indirectly Diod XVII.77.6]

The evidence has been stated but just to repeat it yet again, it is the alignment of the Macedonian and Babylonian months throughout the reign, including prior to the capture of Babylon; the almost precise alignment at Alexander’s death, something statistically unlikely to have occurred purely by chance. The alignment does not seem to be absolute, however, making a calendric assimilation in 331-23 unlikely. If the alignment predates Alexander then the period of Persian vassalage is obviously the strongest candidate for the adoption of a Persian system, Bubares was the son-in-law of Amyntas so Persian ways were known to the court.

Amyntas submitted to Dareios c512Bc and the control was broken by the Ionian Revolt of 499, that’s 13 years, full control was reasserted in 492 by Mardonios and lost after the defeat of Xerxes in 479, another 13 years; if these are to be characterised as ‘very short periods’ it is clear that the even shorter period of Alexander’s rule over Babylon, not even eight years(October 331 to June 323) ought not to allow any influence greater than these two much longer periods of direct occupation. The more so since Macedonia had, like most of the Greek mainland been subject to orientalising influence since the sixth century BC. She had gone so far as to adopt an Anatolian burial practice – kline burials – evidence for which has been found in late fifth century tumuli at Vergina (see ‘Couched in Death’, Elizabeth P Baughan, University of Wisconsin Press, 2013 part available here https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZV1 ... th&f=false
).

If you have some equivalences between the Macedonian calendar and the Athenian, do share them if not kindly stop relieving yourself into the wind. You have also made a crass error, Greek calendars were not 12 months long every one had intercalary years of 13 months as, indeed did the Babylonian and Persian and Elamite (the latter three having been unified by Dareios, though possibly not the date of New Year). So a clear factual error and no point at all.

It is the continued alignment of the months in the Macedonian and Babylonian/Persian calendar over decades and at different times of the year that points to an actual adoption of the superior system by Macedon before 331.

Had you not simply dismissed the previous discussion of the Persian calendar’s direct correlation with the Babylonian as definitively demonstrated by the triple dating of the Beihistun Monument, you might have avoided yet another schoolboy error. Dareios’ monument proves beyond any doubt that Persia used exactly the same Luni-solar calendar as Babylon, in which no year had 365 days, (354 and 384). It is not at all difficult to explain the statements of Curtius and Diodoros, however, as there are at least two well-known calendars in the ancient world which did have 365 days; the Egyptian Civil Calendar and the Roman. Curtius and Diodoros are both Roman historians and they are both using an Egyptian source (Kleitarchos). This emerges clearly when actually looking at the references

Diod XVII 77 vi
In addition to all this, he added concubines to his retinue in the manner of Dareius, in number not less than the days of the year and outstanding in beauty as selected from all the women of Asia.
Curtius III 3 x
…and they were followed by365 young men in scarlet cloaks, their number equalling the days of the year (for, in fact, the Persians divide the year into as many days as we do).
Curtius III 3 xxiv
Next came the carriages of the 360 royal concubines…

Diodoros gives no number but equates the concubines to the number of days in a year, which it is clear from Curtius was given as 360, an Egyptian year minus the ill-omened epagonal days, no other system has 360 days. Curtius is explicit that the day count he uses for the ‘scarlet-cloaked youths’ is Roman falsely glossing what he found in his source. Nothing Zororastrian here, just a careless Roman gloss. Did you even look at the quotes, or were they just plucked from a footnote?

As usual you are prepared to continue with a clearly fallacious position re-Meritt despite his own statement. He mentions that the opinion you wish to foist on the forum as his actual conclusion, sprang from his attitude to dates ‘kata theon’ in 1964. Luckily the relevant article is available on JSTOR –

Athenian Calendar Problems
Benjamin D. Meritt
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
Vol. 95 (1964), pp. 200-260

http://www.jstor.org/stable/283790?seq= ... b_contents


Wherein it is clear, and explained at length that Meritt is only discussing ‘kata theon’ dates, and ‘The phrase occurs in Athens only (so far as texts are preserved) between 195/4 and 95/3 BC, and makes its appearance, or is plausibly restored in, only 13 of these 101 years.’ P 233. Since we are concerned with dates given by Aristoboulos d.c. 280 and Kleitarchos f. 290’s, probably, neither working in Athens the relevance of a comment on the interpretation of the ‘kata’theon’ calendar (Meritt thought it was calculated according to ‘Metonic Principles’, Pritchett that it was governed by observation’ Meritt changed his mind and it is the ‘kata theon’ calendar he describes as not Metonic ie not the result of that system’s calculations).

For the period with which we are concerned he is clear that the Athenian calendar followed the Metonic cycle,

‘We have already noted that indirect confirmation of Fotheringham’s arrangement of years in the cycle is to be found in the regular progression of the festival calendar for the period of the sixth Metonic cycle from 337/6 to 319/8. [The very period concerning us here]. So far as is known, the festival calendar was in accord with Meton’s scheme also during the fifth cycle, where there is evidence for the last ten years from 347/6 to 338/7. On the other hand, the seventh Metonic cycle (318/7 – 300/299) is normal in the festival calendar except for the transposition of I O to O I in theyears307/6 and 306/5 which can be explained as the result of an unusually hard winter. The eighth cycle has only the transposition of IO to OI in the years 298/7 and 297/6, and the ninth cycle in the festival calendar has more points of agreement than disagreement with the Metonic system. From this point the difficulties of tampering and irregularity increase, but for upward of a hundred years the Athenian Festival calendar had followed the Metonic cycles much more closely than we had been led to believe.’ pp 237/8

That’s two crystal clear statements by Meritt of his position that the calendar was ‘Metonic’, by all means carry on repeating your disinformation, everyone else can see straight through it.

As to your appeal to Planeaux, had you understood what he wrote and it is not complicated you would have found that once the Prytanny year was tied to the beginning and end of the Festival year it was absolutely fixed. This occurred in 407 BC, once more obfuscation, or plain ignorance, or maybe you think Aristoboulos had aTime-Machine?


Looking forward to the BIG point still waiting for my factual errors too.

Your first error in your basis of calculation is that a ‘regnal year’ begins with the King’s actual date of accession.( imagine the chaos with every King's 'regnal years' being different! ) In fact a ‘regnal year’ always co-incided with the actual year i.e. Dios/October to Dios/October, and so one can’t count regnal years from Daisios to Daisios. This first calculation of yours is therefore incorrect, and must be disregarded.

As usual mere assertion and as usual completely wrong; and this is certain, the second year of Philip III was 322/1, since AD 1- 321 (rev 23) mentions a solar eclipse on Phil.02.06.28, 26 September 322 BC; since the Babylonians reckoned from Nisanu to Nisanu, April-April Phil 02 began 4 April 322 and Phil 01 upon Alexander’s death 11 June 323, 1 Simanu/Panemos. No post-dating to Dios here is possible (see T Boiy, Electrum 18, ‘Local and Imperial Dates at the Beginning of the Hellenistic Period’, Krakow 2010, available online as a pdf). We can also be sure that this is standard Macedonian practice, since it is a change from normal Babylonian practice, which would have inserted an accession year. This is also supported by a Ptolemaic papyrus

Bennet writes

pEleph 3, pEleph 4 and the  of Elaphion
Contemporary data for the start of the regnal year are given by two Greek papyri from year 41 (pEleph 3 (Artemisios) and pEleph 4 (Hyperberetaios) -- translations here). These two papyri concern transactions involving the same individuals, which gives us an opportunity to determine which one was written first. This would tell us whether Artemisios was before Hyperberetaios (favouring a Dios-based year) or Hyperberetaios was before Artemisios (favouring a Daisios-based year).
The details of the transactions in both cases involve a Syrian woman Elaphion, with a man described as her  (guardian). She pays a third party a sum of money as  (support) for herself. The third party is then enjoined from claiming  again, or to reduce her to slavery (), under penalty of a large fine.
The roles of the  and the third party are assigned as follows:
pEleph 3 (Artemisios): : Pantarkes; payee: Antipator;
sum: 300 drachmae; penalty: 3,000 drachmae
pEleph 4 (Hyperberetaios): : Dion; payee: Pantarkes
sum: 400 drachmae; penalty: 10,000 drachmae
The nature of the transaction is not clear. Samuel notes that several interpretations have been proposed, and the question has been discussed subsequently by Grzybek and Scholl. These interpretations affect the relative order of the papyri. The significant ones are:
• O. Rubensohn, Elephantine-Papyri 27ff., supposes that Elaphion was a slave, or prostitute, and that the  was effectively her owner or pimp. Each contract then marks purchase of control, first by Pantarkes from Antipator and then by Dion from Pantarkes -- and pEleph 3 predates pEleph 4.
Against this, A. E. Samuel, Ptolemaic Chronology 21, notes (a) that a slave cannot be a party to a contract (b) if she is being sold then why is she named as the payer? one would expect the new owner (apparently the ) to be the payer (c) the nature of the "support" is very unclear in this scenario (d) the price is very high.
(a) and (b) seem to be valid and sufficient objections to me. (c) is the key issue to deciding the correct meaning (and sequence) and is discussed below.
(d) is a much weaker argument. In support, Samuel cites pCairZen 1.59003 dating from year 27 of Ptolemy II = 259/8 which records the purchase of an 8 year old girl for 50 drachma. W. L. Westermann, Upon Slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt 60f., lists all slave prices recorded in the Zenon papyri. In addition to Samuel's girl, we have: 112 drachmae for the purchase of a child (pCairZen 1.59010), 150 (sale price) for a man and 300 (purchase) for a woman (PSI4.406), 133 drachmae 2 obol as valuation for a mother and daughter (pCairZen 3.59355). He also notes that pGrad 1 imposes sales tax of 20, 40 and 60 drachmae in an apparently special sale. Since pCol inv 480 = pCol 1.1 imposes taxes at a rate of approximately 20 drachmae per mina, he infers sales prices of 1, 2 or 3 mina = 100, 200 or 300 drachmae, though this last document is admittedly somewhat later, dated to 198/7. However the net conclusion is clear: the individual sums named in the Elephantine papyri are not out of line for Ptolemaic slave prices, although they are on the high side.
These are a limited number of data points and they show high variance. A statistically significant database is provided by approximately 1,000 manumission decrees recorded at Delphi in the last two centuries, analysed by K. Hopkins & P. J. Roscoe, in K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves 158ff. (a promised study on Thessalian manumission decrees by the same authors appears never to have materialised). Unfortunately Hopkins & Roscoe only give mean price data, variance is not considered.
In the early second century, the mean manumission price of a female slave at Delphi was 376 drachmae. The Delphic prices increased by about 25% per century, which suggests that at the beginning of third century an adult female slave cost about 300 Delphic drachmae. K. Hopkins & P. J. Roscoe, in K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves 160 n. 48, estimate the Delphic drachma at about 70% of the Athenian drachma, however they have it backwards. A drachma was 0.01 silver mina. Delphi used the Aeginitan mina of c. 628 grams, while the Attic mina weighed only 430 grams (E. Babelon, Traité des monnaies grecque et romains, I 491f.)), i.e. 1 Delphic drachma = 1.4 Attic drachma, making the estimated female slave price = c. 420 Attic drachmae. G. le Rider & F. de Callataÿ, Les Seleucides et les Ptolemées 143, note that Attic drachmae were exchanged for Ptolemaic drachmae at par, but that the Ptolemaic drachmae weighed only 81% of an Attic drachma. Assuming this differential was reflected in prices, the Attic equivalent of 300 Ptolemaic drachmae is c. 240 Attic drachmae = c. 170 Delphic drachmae.
Also, iBeroia 45 = SEG XII 314, a Macedonian manumission decree dated year 27 Demetrius (probably Demetrius I, i.e. c. 290 (E. Grzybek, Arch. Mak. 5 (1993) 521), though Demetrius II, i.e. c. 235, is also argued), values a female slave at 25 gold staters. Since IG XII 7.69, from about this period, equates Alexandrian, Demetrian and Attic drachmae, this can safely be equated to 500 Attic and Alexandrian drachmae.
On this basis, Elaphion's  was cheap compared to slave prices. However, if one exchanges Delphic drachmae with Ptolemaic drachmae at par, the prices are comparable.
In short, Samuel's argument that 300 or 400 drachmae is a high valuation for a female slave does not seem to be correct.
• J. Partsch, Greichisches Bürgerschaftsrecht I 351 n. 5., supposes that that Elaphion had been freed on condition that she give support ("") to her previous owners, and that the purchase quits her of this obligation. He assumes Rubensohn's ordering.
Against this, A. E. Samuel, Ptolemaic Chronology 21, notes (a) that the contracts contain no indication that Elaphion had ever been a slave (b) that the theory does not explain why Pantarkes is the  in pEleph 3 but payee in pEleph 4 (c) how Elaphion was able to raise 700 drachmae, 300 or 400 of which were raised in 6 months.
The most recent commentary I have found, R. Scholl, Corpus der ptolemäischen Sklaventexte 141f., returns to Partsch's theory. In support of Elaphion's slave status, he notes that  is well-documented as a term for buying manumission, that "Syrian" was almost synonymous with "slave" in documents of this date, to the extent that the majority of imported slaves were Syrian, and that "Elaphion" is documented as a slave-name (pCairZen3.59333). A contract in which Elaphion is buying her freedom well explains the  provisions. On this explanation, pEleph 3 is the earlier of the two papyri, since Pantarkes is her  (who here must be "joint owner") and is not paid off till pEleph 4. Scholl suggests that, alternatively, she was considered free after the first payment but had to make the payment in two parts -- the large amount of money involved (700 drachmae) being simply the high price of freedom. He notes that the signature of Nikagoras, the , is only affixed to pEleph 4, which he supposes indicates that the transaction was concluded by that contract. Again, it would follow that pEleph 3 predates pEleph 4.
While neither Grzybek nor Scholl mention Samuel's objections, Scholl makes a reasonable circumstantial case against his objection (a): the contract does contain indications that could (but need not) be indications of former slave slave status for Elaphion. He is less successful in overcoming objection (b). On Scholl's theory, Pantarkes is  in pEleph 3 because he still maintained rights over Elaphion, rights which were acquitted in pEleph 4. But the contract wording does not require this interpretation, and more importantly it leaves the role of Dion completely unexplained, as Scholl himself recognises, since pEleph 4 is supposed to mark Elaphion's final transition to free status, yet Dion plays exactly the same role in pEleph 4 that Pantarkes played in pEleph 3. Finally, he does not address (c) at all: Samuel's question is not why the sum is so large but how a slave -- a female slave -- could raise so much money.
Scholl raises an important point by noting that only pEleph 4 is signed by Nikagoras, the keeper of the contract. But I think he has it backwards. Contracts are normally signed and sealed when they are entered into, not when their execution is concluded. The fact that Nikagoras' signature and seal is placed on pEleph 4, not pEleph 3, is (to my mind) sufficient evidence in and of itself that pEleph 4 is the primary contract and therefore the earlier one. It was not necessary for him to sign pEleph 3 since he was already the contract keeper for Elaphion.
• A. E. Samuel, Ptolemaic Chronology 23, notes that Elaphion is the payer, that the sums of money are large, and that there is no sign of a husband or relative. He also noted that in Ptolemaic peregrine law, a woman required the assistance of a  when she was a party to a formal contract drawn up by a  (R. Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco-Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, 175). In theory, the  is acting as her guardian, though in practice he would be her agent in such a context. He concludes that Elaphion is a wealthy woman, possibly running a business connected with the Elephantine garrison. Finally, he notes that Pantarkes appears in both documents, once as  and once as payee. Thus, Pantarkes' relationship to Elaphion certainly changed between the two contracts and it is most likely that the contracts are themselves the instruments of that change.
Samuel concludes that the  acquired by the transactions must be understood as including the services of a . Even when acquiring or discharging such services, Elaphion must be still assisted in such transaction by a, who must then be the outgoing  who is, therefore, discharged by the same transaction. On this interpretation, pEleph 4 must be the earlier of the 2 papyri, in which she is engaging the services of Pantarkes, paying him in advance, and discharging Dion. In pEleph 3 she is then similarly engaging the services of Antipator and discharging Pantarkes.
Against this, E. Grzybek, ZPE 76 (1989) 206, notes (a) that it is highly unlikely in Hellenistic society that a woman would be able to engage in commerce at such a level of cashflow and (b) Samuel's interpretation of is equally unlikely. Scholl ignores Samuel's discussion.
I don't find either objection to be more than prejudice. In medieval Islamic society both slaves and women with sufficient strength of character and the right connections were able to make their way in the world, even if they were unusual. Contract law would have to be adapted to them, and Taubenschlag's comments indicate that in fact it was. The notion of  as "service" as an extension of "support" seems not unreasonable; a crux of Grzybek's own proposal is that it could represent a dowry, which purchased the support of the family a woman married into. Indeed, it may be that Elaphion was wealthy not because she was engaged in commerce but by inheritance; Samuel's reconstruction would be just as viable.
M. Passehl, pers. comm., has proposed that Samuel is essentially correct in his understanding of the formal role of the , but that the contracts are not simultaneously engaging a new  and discharging an old one. Rather, they are paying off an old  in arrears for services rendered after the new  has already been hired. This would allow pEleph 3 to be the earlier of the two contracts.
However, the contracts are formally concerned with payment of , which usually refers to support that will be rendered in the future. Moreover, on this explanation we would expect to see two separate contracts on essentially the same date, one for engagement of the new  followed by one for discharge of the old , and we would still expect to see an earlier contract engaging the old . In other words, Passehl's scenario postulates the existence of documents not in evidence.
• E. Grzybek, ZPE 76 (1989) 206, sees the as a form of dowry, and regards Pantarkes as having literally been Elaphion's guardian. In effect, the payment to Antipator was made from the 400 drachmae that had been paid to Pantarkes, who made 100 drachmae by acting as Elaphion's guardian for 6 or 7 months. However, he stresses that this explanation preserves Samuel's chronological interpretation of the data. This interpretation is followed in the most recent publication of these papyri by J. J. Farber in B. Porten et al., The Elephantine Papyri in English, 414 (D4) n. 1.
Against this, R. Scholl, Corpus der ptolemäischen Sklaventexte 141f. notes (a) that the papyri give no hint that the 300 drachmae paid to Antipator comes out of the 400 previously paid to Pantarkes, and (b) that Grzybek ignores, and his explanation cannot explain, the provisions against claiming  in the future.
While I think objection (a) is rather weak, (b) seems to me to be decisive. In essence, Grzybek's theory implies that the contract is a receipt with a built-in penalty for challenging its authenticity. The notion that a concubine-in-waiting was transferred between at least three successive guardians also seems to me (though apparently not to Farber) rather farfetched. One must wonder what was taking her eventual partner so long.
I am hardly an expert in Ptolemaic contract law. Nevertheless, Samuel's explanation seems easily the most reasonable to me of the ones offered to date. Except in Grzybek's explanation, Elaphion must have access to large funds, regardless of whether or not she was formally a slave. But I doubt that she was, despite Scholl's point that the contract uses terminology found in other manumission contracts. The fact that Pantarkes and Dion both play the role of indicates to me that they had the same relationship to her, which is difficult to explain if the contracts were partly about the purchase of her freedom from Pantarkes. Whatever the nature of the transactions, Elaphion is equally free (or unfree) in both of them.
The key question is the temporal implication of purchasing . A detailed discussion is presented in W. L. Westermann, CP 40 (1945) 1. In manumission decrees, a freed slave often remains an indentured servant to the former master, in return for  -- support -- meaning, essentially, food and board, the purchase of which is covered by the manumission price. Similarly, it was provided as support for wetnurses, as sustenance compensation for support for detained runaway slaves before they could be returned to their owners. Westermann notes a set of Claudian papyri from Tebtunis which are contracts for , distinguishing between simple maintenance and slave maintenance; he notes that the former is for free men (or women); the payments are prepayments.
In short, while the exact significance of  depends on context, it is generally maintenance support that is paid for in advance. Thus in pEleph 4 Elaphion is paying for  to be supplied by Pantarkes, and in pEleph 3 she is paying for  to be supplied by Antipator. The provisions against reduction to slavery suggest that she is a servant, possibly a freedwoman, but they do not indicate that her status is changing as a result of these transactions. Samuel's temporal analysis is essentially correct, even if his view of Elaphion's status is probably wrong.
The net result of all this is that Hyperberetaios in year 41 (pEleph 4) was most likely, though not certainly, before Artemisios of year 41 (pEleph 3). Therefore the start of Ptolemy I's Macedonian years was between Artemisios and Hyperberetaios, which excludes any scenario in which his years started in Dios. Samuel concludes that they started on the anniversary of Alexander's death, i.e. (for him) on 29 Daisios.

Involved but if, as Bennett and Samuel reckon, Hyperberetaios yr 41 comes before Artemisios yr 41, this is proof further that the Macedonians used an anniversarial system. Whilst you may find this confusing, they clearly did not, nor can I see what is confusing about it.

The Daisios to Daisios table is to demonstrate that your model cannot be right, typically, you have missed the point. Still that is something of a leitmotif, Bennett demonstrates that there were various systems in use in Ptolemaic Egypt, one of which was the standard Macedonian anniversary system, also proved by AD 1- 321; before screaming ‘error’ at others you really ought to check your facts.

The tables you link to concern the reckoning of the chronographers not dating formulae or the expression of reign lengths in historians; it explains the round number in the Oxyrhynchos Chronographer’s Apprentice but says nothing about Aristoboulos’ and Kleitarchos’ statements of the length of the reign of Alexander. Neither can be based on a chronographic source as both include odd months; chronographic sources all give round years since just as one end of a regnal year is annexed the other is donated in their system, whose function is only to give simple references to identify each year. They are therefore irrelevant for finding the month that anything happened. Perhaps you want to argue that Niarchos, a contemporary and the main actor in the events took his note that he set out from the mouths of the Indos in Alexander’s eleventh year from a chronographic source but, aside from the inherent unlikelihood of such a scenario, there is no indication that there was a Macedonian chronographer writing at this time, if there were the confusions of the Parian marble for Alexander’s campaigns would be inexplicable, the note is therefore Niarchos’ own using the standard anniversarial dating of Macedonian practice, as far as it can be demonstrated.

Notwithstanding suggestions that the battle was fought the day after the eclipse, let us assume that it took place 11 days later, as the Babylonian chronicles and Plutarch [Alexander XXXI ] say, with Plutarch perhaps indirectly drawing on the chronicles here (though in “Camillus’ XIX.3 he gives the date of Gaugemala as 26th Boedromion/Sept, so its date cannot be 'certain').

Suggestions that the battle immediately followed the eclipse can be rejected out right, there is no need to ‘assume’ what two sources tell us, one independent and contemporary, unless one is perversely trying to cast doubt on their statements. Plutarch does not mention September, of course, only Boedromion and that the eclipse occurred ‘about the beginning of the Mysteries’, combined with his note in Camillus we get a date of 15 Boedromion for the approximate start of the Mysteries, which is correct and in this year fell on 20th September, since that was the date of the eclipse. All these dates are ‘certain’ and consistent, the Athenians were two days out of step with the Babylonians

I disagree.’Vulgus’ has many meanings and in a military context ‘host’ is clearly apt, and there can be no doubt in any event and on any translation that Justin has Alexander addressing Philip’s whole army, Macedonians and allies. Let us have no more ‘red herrings’ over exact translations to distract from the major point here

On what basis do think your disagreement has any worth? Have you suddenly learned Latin? The ‘exact translation’ can never be a ‘red-herring’ unless you are trying to push a false one. There is no major point but in your muddled mind.

Amuddle which continues with ‘Makedones’ you still cannot produce any ancient evidence

Diod XVIII 12 ii
…while he himself, taking thirteen thousand Macedonians and six hundred horsemen (for Macedonia was short of citizen soldiers because of the number of those who had been sent to Asia)…
αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἀναλαβὼν Μακεδόνας μὲν μυρίους καὶ τρισχιλίους, ἱππεῖς ἑξακοσίους ῾ἐσπάνιζεγὰρ ἡ Μακεδονία στρατιωτῶν πολιτικῶν διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἀπεσταλμένων εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν

Diod. XVIII 16 i
16 1 While these things were going on, Perdiccas, taking with him King Philip and the royal army, campaigned against Ariarathes, the ruler of Cappadocia. His failure to take orders from the Macedonians had been overlooked by Alexander, owing to the struggle with Darius and its distractions, and he had enjoyed a very long respite as king of Cappadocia.
ἅμα δὲ τούτοις πραττομένοις Περδίκκας, ἔχων μεθ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ τόν τε βασιλέα Φίλιππον καὶ τὴν βασιλικὴν δύναμιν,ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ Ἀριαράθην τὸν Καππαδοκίας δυνάστην. οὗτος γὰρ οὐ προσέχων τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ὑπὸ μὲνἈλεξάνδρου παρεωράθη διὰ τοὺς περὶ Δαρεῖον ἀγῶνας καὶ περισπασμούς, ἀναστροφὴν δὲ πολυχρόνιον εἶχεκυριεύων τῆς Καππαδοκίας.

XVII 109 i
He selected the oldest of his soldiers who were Macedonians and released them from service; there were ten thousand of these.
αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἐπιλέξας τοὺς πρεσβυτάτους τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπέλυσε τῆς στρατείας,ὄντας ὡς μυρίους.

These simply do not make the equation you require, but do not bother discussing it everyone can see you have no point, and the usual smoke screen of ‘communis opinio’ does not cover the lack of any evidence.

And immediately a misconstruing of the ‘communis opinio’ I mentioned, was saying ‘after Bosworth’s ‘Commentary’, ie 1980, in anyway confusing? Seeming so since you cite CAH 1927 and then fail to realise that Dios IS ‘late summer early fall’.

In short you have thrown much into the mix to distract and obfuscate, why drag the fifth century or second century Athenian calendar into it?

All the very solid evidence declares that the Macedonians of Alexander’s time counted their king’s years from the date of their accession and that Aristoboulos and Kleitarchos’ lengths for Alexander’s reign must take precedence as not only do they fit most of the evidence from the nearest contemporary sources, the later ones that seem to contradict them either belong to a chronographic tradition which did not count the reigns by the month but only rounded years. Plutarch’s birthday in Loos is at odds with all the evidence and stands unsourced. Just as I said at the beginning of your desperate fugue. Let’s hope you take the time to get some of your facts straight before your bigger fish is served, else it will be as cod as this.

The following two posts were ones I made back at the beginning of February in response to the above by Agesilaos, but on recently re-reading this thread it appears that for some reason - probably technical - they didn't make it onto the site.........

Agesilaos Fri Jan 22 2016

I should not have to explain what you have said to you but.....

It is the height of arrogance to presume to tell me what I wrote, and what I meant by it. I write plain English, which you claim to speak and understand, yet evidently do not. In reality it is simply the ‘spin’of your ‘interpretation’that you refer to, and you do this not just to my writings but also everything else including original source material. All is seen through the coloured spectacles of your own convictions and opinion.

As you wrote to Taphoi in July 2011 [ Birth day/Death day thread] :

“It is an old and ineffective rhetorical tactic to tell an opponent what their argument is and then address the cuckoo rather than the real point;”-

which is also called the ‘straw man’ fallacy;
and also :

“One day I am sure you will read what people say and not what you wish they had said;”

...... and here you are doing just that ! Hoist on your own petard!

Agesilaos wrote

Xenophon wrote:

“The synchronous months of Alexander’s death ONLY prove that by 323, the Babylonian and Macedonian calendars had been made to co-incide – perfectly logical now that all belonged to a single Empire.”

Clearly means that you are placing the co-incidence of the two calendars between October 331 and June 323, as this is the only time, ‘that all belonged to a single Empire’. This is different from a position which merely says that they were aligned ‘before Alexander’s death’, ie there is only the terminus ante quem not your post quem.

It means no such thing. When I say ONLY and put it in capitals, it is to emphasise that the only thing proven is that by 323 these calendars became synchronous. The part after the dash is simply a comment, namely that a logical time for this to have occurred is sometime prior to 323, now that all belonged to a single empire. It means what it says, and not that I am necessarily “placing the co-incidence of the two calendars between October 331 and June 323”, though as I also explained there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that suggests this was the case. In future, please restrict your comments to what I actually say, not your ‘interpretation’ of it or what you wished I’d said, so that you may make petty criticisms..... Perhaps you would do well to remember your own advice........

Agesilaos wrote:

In fact,

As I emphasised, there is only absolute proof that by 323, the two calendars were synchronous.

May well not be the case. Had you read the Bennett link I supplied you would have found that the Greek term ‘deike’, which was formerly translated as ‘evening’ is more properly ‘late afternoon’, as specific as the ninth hour of daylight in Attica. This would mean that the date of the Diary, given by Plutarch, Alx 76.ix, as 28th Daisios for his death is a full day behind the date given by both Aristoboulos and the Astronomical Diary. It is not much of an alignment if it is 24 hrs out! No alignment means that the Macedonians probably adopted the Babylonian system of intercalations earlier than Alexander, something also indicated by the monthly alignment of the dates of Gaugamela 24 Ululu = late Hyperberetaios.

I had read all of Bennett long before you posted that link, and was well aware of what you refer to, which as you have written it above, is misleading and quite incorrect.. and another good example of interpreting material with a ‘spin’ to suit your argument of the moment.. You, apparently, have not read all, or you would have been aware of Bennett’s quite lengthy explanation for the (incorrectly) supposed discrepancy . Note that this is NOT between Babylonian and Macedonian dates which in fact agree, but between two apparently Macedonian dates, that of the ‘Diaries’ and that given by Aristobolus. I won’t quote it all – you can read his lengthy discussion yourself here, several paragraphs in:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptole ... y_i_fr.htm

– but he concludes:
“This explanation allows us to reconcile the 28 Daisios of the Diaries with the Babylonian 29 Ayyaru, and to retain 28 Daisios as the correct Macedonian date of Alexander's death. The difficulty remains of explaining the discrepancy between the Diaries and Aristoboulos. These are apparently both Macedonian dates, and so we would expect them to be based on the same observation of the new crescent moon, even if they did use different conventions for the start of the day. (For this reason, Depuydt's suggestion (WO 28 (1997) 117 at 127) that Aristoboulos, who was at the centre of court life, was using the Babylonian day numbers because he was in Babylon, strikes me as quite unlikely.) Given the 36-hour difference, the reason for it can no longer be a simple matter of a difference in the convention used for the start of the day. [i.e. days beginning at sunset in one system and at dawn in another]
There is perhaps one possibility, suggested by A. B. Bosworth, From Arrian to Alexander, 167. Aristoboulos is said to have written his memoirs at the age of 84 (Lucian, Makrobioi 22). While his dates are unknown, this must certainly have been several decades after the event. He may well simply have been writing from a slightly faulty memory, or, in an age that did not value precision about dates, he may simply have meant to indicate that Alexander died at the end of Daisios. It is notable that Plutarch gives both dates close together without commenting on the discrepancy, and that Arrian regards Aristoboulos as confirming the Diary account.”

The calendars are not in fact “24 hours out” at all, but to all intents and purposes in alignment. Since there is alignment, your rather poor argument evaporates altogether. Moreover, even if that were not the case, there is no logical ‘link’ between the calendars being not-quite-aligned and Macedon adopting a Babylonian calendar ‘earlier’ – according to you in the 6-5 C BC! It simply does not follow.



Agesilaos wrote

Xenophon wrote:

“Samuel himself says that the alignment may have meant no more than ‘making permanent the relationships as they stood when Alexander took Babylon.’ Which means that the Macedonian calendar must have shared its system of intercalations with the Babylonian before Alexander took Babylon.”


That does not necessarily follow at all,....even if true it only shows synchronocity no earlier than 331, which may itself be co-incidental ....after all, both were lunar based calendars, and they worked by observations of the same moon!!

Oh dear, you clearly still do not get it. Every luni-solar calendar observed the same moon yet patently they were not in alignment. Despite your continual assertions to the contrary, both Athens and Macedon operated a Metonic system of seven intercalary years in each set of nineteen but each chose different years in which to use the intercalary years.

Why do you make these apparently fictional assertions without evidence? Even Merritt acknowledges that the majority of 19 year cycles at Athens are not Metonic (see ante in previous posts) – though I see you now restrict your assertion that Athens used the Metonic calendar to the presumed (by Merritt) 5 th, 6th and 7th cycles – the last of which is not at all Metonic. As far as I know, we have no direct evidence for the Macedonian calendar prior to the death of Alexander whatsoever, let alone where intercalary years and months occurred. As has been pointed out previously, if Alexander could inter-calate ‘ad hoc’ months, which he is recorded as doing on at least one occasion, the Macedonian calendar could not have been Metonic i.e. with fixed embolimic months.
There is absolutely no evidence whatever that Macedon used a ‘Metonic’ calendar , and your assertion is almost certainly false. The likelihood is that Macedon, like all other Greek states for which we have evidence operated a luni-solar calendar with ‘ad hoc’ intercalations in Philip and Alexander’s time.

Agesilaos wrote:

Weighting for a fairly even distribution of intercalary years there is a 1:972 chance of an alignment of intercalary years but the embolimic months are also synchronous which knocks the odds up to 1:11,664. Pretty remote then. Looking forward to the ‘rather important point’, I have missed.

Xenophon:On your own quoted evidence ( from Merritt’s “Athenian archons”), it is proven that Athens did not operate a technically ‘Metonic’ calendar, with its seven regular intercalary years, but rather continued to intercalate irregularly on an ad hoc basis, observationally. Of course, since all were observing the same moon, they were bound to align every 19 years, following the same lunar cycle, whether by ‘Metonic’ calculation or by actual observation, or even by just following ‘the formula’..

It seems your being ‘arithmetically challenged’extends to Probability theory too ! I don’t know how you came up with your figures since you didn’t explain the method, but the high numbers you came up with and the reference to “weighting for a fairly even distribution”implies you are using random numbers – which of course, if you are, would be completely wrong ! The 7 intercalary years in the 19 year lunar sequence are not random at all!
We must remember that in any luni-solar system, in order to stay accurate, an intercalary month must be inserted some 7 times in the 19 year lunar cycle, roughly every 3 years, but maybe two or four. The Athenian‘Metonic cycle’ has fixed intercalary years, four every third year, and three every second year, and the pattern runs second, third, third, second, third, third, second years etc. An ‘ad hoc’ system is not random either, for an archon selecting which third years will be intercalary, and which second years, will in effect, generally have only two choices in each 3 year ‘set’ – either to intercalate the second year (which is done three times) or the third year ( done four times). [Exception that proves the rule: 4 or 5 times in around 350 years, the intercalary year is a fourth year] The first year cannot be selected because two intercalary years never occur one after another. So in a 3 year ‘set’ our hypothetical eponymous archon can select either the second or third year ( or very rarely the fourth year) which generally gives him a roughly 50-50 chance of coinciding with the regular Metonic cycle each 3 year set ( complicated by the fact that he can only select the second year 3 times, but roughly correct.) Thus a fairly high co-incidence is likely, and it is this which has fuelled the debate over ‘Metonic/not Metonic. Merritt and Pritchett debated the subject, sometimes vitriolically, for decades without resolving the matter, as you are aware.

Agesilaos wrote:

Xenophon:Except that in 330 BC and thereabouts, the island city of Cyzicus( as it then was) was technically part of Macedon, Alexander having taken it from the Persians in 334 BC.......

By the same token Babylon was part of Macedonia in 331!! LOL None of these conquests was counted as being ‘technically part of Macedonia’, which is amply demonstrated by their persistence as satrapal units and Macedonia’s continued use as a specific territorial term. Keep clutching at them straws.

Irrespective of whether or not you regard the Macedonian empire as Macedonia or not, the simple fact remains that the Babylonian astronomical diaries became known in Greece and Macedon within about a year after Alexander entered Babylon, as proven beyond doubt by the works of Callipus and Aristotle – and that is the point.


Agesilaos wrote:

Xenophon:I don't know what evidence you are referring to. Your assertion that the Macedonian and Persian/Babylonian calendars were aligned from the two very short periods of Persian ‘influence’ in the Days of Darius I and Xerxes has no evidence whatsoever, as previously pointed out and is an ‘ad ignorandum’ type argument, therefore illogical. The most likely form of calendar in Macedon, like all others in Greece, is a lunisolar one consisting of 12‘hollow’ 29 day months and ‘full’ 30 day months ( which type was decided by observation at the time). One pointer in this regard is its approximate equivalence with the Attic civil festival calendar of the time.....
BTW, the Persian calendar, at least circa 330 BC, was NOT the Babylonian lunisolar one [354 days aprox], but a solar one, probably Zoroastrian, of 365 days, as we are told in passing by Curtius [III.3.10 and III.3.24; also indirectly Diod XVII.77.6]

The evidence has been stated but just to repeat it yet again, it is the alignment of the Macedonian and Babylonian months throughout the reign, including prior to the capture of Babylon; the almost precise alignment at Alexander’s death, something statistically unlikely to have occurred purely by chance. The alignment does not seem to be absolute, however, making a calendric assimilation in 331-23 unlikely. If the alignment predates Alexander then the period of Persian vassalage is obviously the strongest candidate for the adoption of a Persian system, Bubares was the son-in-law of Amyntas so Persian ways were known to the court.

See above. The alignment is in fact absolute ( refer to Bennett) – in 323 BC. There is no evidence the alignment took place before Alexander entered Babylon, and the circumstantial evidence of when the Babylonian Astronomical diaries became known in Greece and Macedon – circa 330 BC suggests it occurred sometime after it, at a time when there was a need for a single calendar.

Agesilaos wrote:

Amyntas submitted to Dareios c512Bc and the control was broken by the Ionian Revolt of 499, that’s 13 years, full control was reasserted in 492 by Mardonios and lost after the defeat of Xerxes in 479, another 13 years; if these are to be characterised as ‘very short periods’ it is clear that the even shorter period of Alexander’s rule over Babylon, not even eight years(October 331 to June 323) ought not to allow any influence greater than these two much longer periods of direct occupation.

Your continued repetition of unevidenced assertions is really growing tiresome. There is absolutely NO evidence, zero, that Persia ‘controlled’ Macedon at any time beyond the two brief periods of invading armies ‘passing through’, and that very briefly. Nor is it uncommon for neighbouring states to make political alliances by marriage, perhaps on this occasion to cement an acknowledgement by an autonomous Macedon of Darius as “Great King” ( which would be purely nominal). That does not mean they adopt the neighbour’s calendar though ! To suggest so is so illogical as to border on farcical.
For an interesting discussion of relations between Macedon and Persia, see Eugene Borza’s “In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon”, Chapter 5 in particular.

Earlier, you merely asserted Persian “influence”, now you claim Persia “controlled” Macedon and it was under lengthy periods of “direct occupation”? I have asked you several times for evidence of this, which you have singularly failed to produce. This is just a totally unevidenced and completely false assertion, which you keep repeating despite its proven falsehood. Let me remind you what I wrote as recently as 4 Jan on this thread:

It is correct that Alexander I of Macedon acknowledged Darius as ‘Great King’[Herodotus V.17], but Macedon was not conquered or subjugated. We have discussed this ‘Persian influence’ before, and I will quote here what I wrote on the ‘Taktike Theorioi’ thread p.14 Sept 14:

“ Indeed the evidence is that, like Sherlock Holmes dog that did not bark in the night, Herodotus does NOT say that Macedon became subject to Persia at all, but says Alexander I bribed the 'search party' after the murder.[Herod V.17 ff]. Later Herodotus records that in 491 BC, while in Macedonia, Darius' general Mardonius "added the Macedonians to the list of Darius' subjects." which can only mean they were a new conquest, not the crushing of a revolt by existing vassals. Mardonius was attacked in Macedon and forced to retire to Asia (mostly due to natural disaster to his fleet)[H.6.42 ff]. Macedon became subject to Persia again briefly in 480-479 BC when it was over-run by Xerxes army.”

So Macedon was very briefly subjugated by Darius’ General Mardonius in 491, and then they withdrew [more or less immediately], and again briefly by Xerxes in 480-479 before again withdrawing. Agesilaos is a trifle forgetful, for the Behistun inscription, completed c. 519 BC, would have to predict the future to claim Macedon (!), and indeed Darius only claims the “Yauna”[Ionian Greeks], making no mention of Macedon ( otherwise referred to as ‘Yauna Takabara’) until his tomb inscription at Naqsh-e-Rustam after his death in 486 BC, when he does boast sovereignty - though in actuality he had none.

Against these two very brief periods of ‘Persian influence/control’ we have overwhelming ‘Greek influence’ over centuries – language, culture, ethnicity [of the upper classes at least] etc. The ‘balance of probability’ therefore comes down heavily in favour of Greece, and it is very likely that like the rest of Greece, Macedon used a luni-solar calendar, with inter-calary months added on an ‘ad hoc’ basis as needed.”

Agesilaos wrote:

The more so since Macedonia had, like most of the Greek mainland been subject to orientalising influence since the sixth century BC. She had gone so far as to adopt an Anatolian burial practice – kline burials – evidence for which has been found in late fifth century tumuli at Vergina (see ‘Couched in Death’, Elizabeth P Baughan, University of Wisconsin Press, 2013 part available here https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZV1 ... th&f=fals

That the Mediterranean world, including Greece, absorbed cultural influences from further east (“orientalising influences”) through trade etc is well known, yet no Greek state adopted Persian/Babylonian calendars. There is NO evidence that Macedon did either. The adoption or otherwise of kline burials, or any other cultural aspects imported from the East, like political marriages referred to, bears no relation to the type of calendar in use !!!!


Agesilaos wrote:

If you have some equivalences between the Macedonian calendar and the Athenian, do share them if not kindly stop relieving yourself into the wind.

Ah, Agesilaos ‘Coprostom’ sinks to offensive references to human waste yet again!
I am always encouraged when he does so, for insults and foul language are a sure sign that his arguments are lost, and he knows it, and resorts to bad language as a result!! The fact that both are luni-solar, and that Athenian and Macedonian months can be roughly equated/equivalenced (e.g. by Arrian) is manifest evidence, even though they are not synchronous.

You have also made a crass error, Greek calendars were not 12 months long every one had intercalary years of 13 months as, indeed did the Babylonian and Persian and Elamite (the latter three having been unified by Dareios, though possibly not the date of New Year). So a clear factual error and no point at all.

Your desperation to criticise anything and everything is showing! There is no “crass error” or “factual error”. We have been discussing calendars and inter-calary months for some time and it is not necessary to spell this fact out every time a post is made, because it is obvious from the general discussion. This is particularly ironic coming from you, who ‘forgot’ to count inter-calary months in his countback of Alexander’s reign, leading to arithmetical error!

Agesilaos:It is the continued alignment of the months in the Macedonian and Babylonian/Persian calendar over decades and at different times of the year that points to an actual adoption of the superior system by Macedon before 331.

Yet again, this an unevidenced assertion. Please produce evidence that Macedonian and Babylonian months were in any form of alignment prior to 331 BC, let alone over decades. If you cannot, then please don’t make such unsupported and incorrect assertions, when there is zero evidence for same.

Agesilaos wrote:

Had you not simply dismissed the previous discussion of the Persian calendar’s direct correlation with the Babylonian as definitively demonstrated by the triple dating of the Beihistun Monument, you might have avoided yet another schoolboy error. Dareios’ monument proves beyond any doubt that Persia used exactly the same Luni-solar calendar as Babylon, in which no year had 365 days, (354 and 384). It is not at all difficult to explain the statements of Curtius and Diodoros, however, as there are at least two well-known calendars in the ancient world which did have 365 days; the Egyptian Civil Calendar and the Roman. Curtius and Diodoros are both Roman historians and they are both using an Egyptian source (Kleitarchos). This emerges clearly when actually looking at the references.

Speaking of “schoolboy errors”, the Beihistun monument does NOT “definitively demonstrate”, or prove “beyond any doubt” a“direct correlation” between the Persian calendar and Babylonian calendar, any more than the rough equivalence between Athenian and Macedonian months, or modern ones, proves “direct correlation” between them ( e.g. the probable date of Gaugamela as Athenian 26 Boedromion, equivalent to modern 1 October.) That is a completely illogical argument. All it really shows is that both Persian and Babylonian were apparently luni-solar at that time. And this is not merely my opinion only. For example, Stern in “Calendars in Antiquity”P.170 points out:
“The similarity of the Old Persian calendar to the Babylonian calendar in the 6 C BCE is most evident in the trilingual Behistun inscription, where the same days of the month are recorded for Old Persian months in the Persian and Elamite texts as the Babylonian months in the Akkadian text. These exact equivalences, however, cannot be taken at face value: they only mean that the Akkadian translators of the Elamite or Old Persian texts believed both calendars to be identical, or assumed so for translation convenience. In reality, even if both calendars were lunar, there could have been substantial differences between them, in terms of when the lunar month began and when intercalations were made.”

He then goes on to relate how later, in the 5 th century, the two calendars may have‘merged’, rather as the Macedonian and Babylonian ones did later in Alexander’s time, which can be established from the’Persepolis Fortification and Treasury tablets’, but see footnote 11 P.171 for uncertainties in this regard.


Agesilaos wrote:

Diod XVII 77 vi
In addition to all this, he added concubines to his retinue in the manner of Dareius, in number not less than the days of the year and outstanding in beauty as selected from all the women of Asia.
Curtius III 3 x
…and they were followed by365 young men in scarlet cloaks, their number equalling the days of the year (for, in fact, the Persians divide the year into as many days as we do).
Curtius III 3 xxiv
Next came the carriages of the 360 royal concubines…


Diodoros gives no number but equates the concubines to the number of days in a year, which it is clear from Curtius was given as 360, an Egyptian year minus the ill-omened epagonal days, no other system has 360 days. Curtius is explicit that the day count he uses for the ‘scarlet-cloaked youths’ is Roman falsely glossing what he found in his source. Nothing Zororastrian here, just a careless Roman gloss. Did you even look at the quotes, or were they just plucked from a footnote?

I don’t know why one would interpret Cutius in that fashion.. There is no “Roman gloss”, for Curtius is specifically comparing the Roman calendar with the Persian one, stating both have the same number of days : “..…and they were followed by 365 young men in scarlet/crimson cloaks, their number equalling the days of the year (for, in fact, the Persians divide the year into as many days as we do).”

As to Zoroastrian calendars, as Taquizadeh points out in “Old Iranian Calendars” :
“There is also an older reference to the Persian year in a short notice by Quintus Curtius Rufus, a historian of the first century AD and biographer of Alexander the Great, from which it may be inferred that the Persian year in his time did not differ from the Zoroastrian year of later centuries. This author declares that "The Magians used to sing a native song. There followed the Magians 365 young men clothed in purple (crimson) mantles equal in number to the days of the year. For with the Persians too the year is divided into the same number of days. The Persian year as we know it in the Islamic period was, in fact, a vague year of 365 days, with twelve months each of thirty days, with the exception of the eighth month, which had thirty-five days or, rather, thirty days plus another five supplementary days, or epagomenae, added to it.”
......so it seems it was not just Egyptian calendars that had 360 days plus 5 epagonal days for a total of 365, and Curtius is quite correct, and it is you who would appear to be mistaken.

As usual you are prepared to continue with a clearly fallacious position re-Meritt despite his own statement. He mentions that the opinion you wish to foist on the forum as his actual conclusion, sprang from his attitude to dates ‘kata theon’ in 1964. Luckily the relevant article is available on JSTOR –

Athenian Calendar Problems
Benjamin D. Meritt
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
Vol. 95 (1964), pp. 200-260

http://www.jstor.org/stable/283790?seq= ... b_contents


Wherein it is clear, and explained at length that Meritt is only discussing ‘kata theon’ dates, and ‘The phrase occurs in Athens only (so far as texts are preserved) between 195/4 and 95/3 BC, and makes its appearance, or is plausibly restored in, only 13 of these 101 years.’ P 233. Since we are concerned with dates given by Aristoboulos d.c. 280 and Kleitarchos f. 290’s, probably, neither working in Athens the relevance of a comment on the interpretation of the ‘kata’theon’ calendar (Meritt thought it was calculated according to ‘Metonic Principles’, Pritchett that it was governed by observation’ Meritt changed his mind and it is the ‘kata theon’ calendar he describes as not Metonic ie not the result of that system’s calculations).

Yes, I would agree that by putting together several of Merritt’s papers, it is clear he is conceding that the later ‘Kata Theon’calendar is not Metonic, and that is what he was referring to, but nevertheless even Merritt, with his propensity for claiming as much is ‘Metonic’as possible only claims 6 [fifth,sixth,eigth,ninth,seventeenth and eighteenth] from 21 cycles are supposedly Metonic. Since we are concerned with Alexander’s time that includes the 5th (commencing 347 BC) and 6th ( commencing 328) which Merritt reckons Metonic. Let us not take Athenian chronology any further, but leave it to Merritt ( who died in 1989) and Pritchett (died 2007 aged 98), and their interminable debate.
The relevance of Athens calendar is only this illogical assertion you made on 24 Dec, page 7:
“

Yet the Greeks had been aware of Babylonian astronomy much earlier, Meton introduced his 19 year cycle in 432BC clearly based on Babylonian models which Darius I had accepted in his reform of the Achaemenid calendar (certainly by 503 BC). This may well have been used in Macedonia from this time too, since the Kingdom was heavily influenced by, if not under the control of, the Persian Empire at the time.”

Problems with this are:
1. So far as can be determined, Athens ( nor any other Greek state) did not adopt Meton’s calendar as its civil/festival calendar, but largely continued an ‘ad hoc’ system.
2. Persian “influence” was minimal, and there is no evidence that Macedon adopted a Persian or Babylonian calendar at that time, and Persian “control” was of very short duration, limited to two brief invasions.
3. Even if Merritt was right that the Athenian calendar was ‘Metonic’ at the time of Philip’s death/Alexander’s accession, it tells us nothing about contemporary Macedon’s calendar – of which, as you have acknowledged elsewhere on the forum, we have little or no knowledge. To suggest that Macedon had already adopted the Babylonian/Metonic calendar is therefore just another illogical ‘ad ignorandium’ argument.



Agesilaos wrote:

For the period with which we are concerned he is clear that the Athenian calendar followed the Metonic cycle,

.....according to Merritt, but other scholars such as Pritchett take a different view. The sequence of having to inter-calate every 3 years or so, for a total of 7 in a 19 year cycle is characteristic of all luni-solar calendars, whether they inter-calate ‘ad hoc’, or on a regularised Babylonian/Metonic system. As Planeaux says:
“How closely the Epynomous Archons came to follow Meton’s new scheme also remains debated.”

That’s two crystal clear statements by Meritt of his position that the calendar was ‘Metonic’, by all means carry on repeating your disinformation, everyone else can see straight through it.

See above – Merritt tended to ‘see’ Metonic cycles rather more frequently than there really were, and other scholars disagree and debate the matter to this day.....as you well know, having carried on a ‘chronology debate’ with Taphoi on the Birth day/Death day thread. ( so you have an advantage in having rehearsed this chronological argument before in that thread). You have changed your tune decidedly to suit your current argument.
Indeed on Sun July 17 2011you posted:

“Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Athens operated according to the Metonic cycle, that is an invention of Merrit and Dinsmoor (not the metonic cycle itself, of course just its use in Athens) to support their fixed festival calendar theory; it seems that there were no rules for intercalation at Athens, although it must have happened; the intercalary months we have evidence for move all over the calendar. Nor is there a 'kata theon' dating for 264 the earliest being 196, so Merrit it working purely on his own discredited theory. Pritchett and Neueberger's more sensible (IMHO) opinions are neatly summarised here”

.....and on July 21:

“What this actually shows is that the Athenians were not operating your mythical Lunar Regulated Calendar, nor a regular Metonic system all they worried about was having seven intercalary months in a nineteen year cycle so that the seasons did not get too out of line.”

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/pr ... _81_1_2374

Which reference is to one of Pritchett’s papers refuting Merritt. This the opposite of what you now assert here in this thread, notwithstanding that nothing new has arisen in the meantime !!!
Even Merritt acknowledged that there was much uncertainty, saying after his archon list: “There are many problems still in the above list”. That uncertainty is one of the reasons why I don’t care to hold chronology debates, especially with someone who contradicts himself in his views. It smacks altogether of yet another “argument for argument’s sake”, and you trying to show cleverness by being ‘Devil’s advocate’, for something you don’t actually believe, as you have done before. This hypocritical type of argument merely damages your credibility, making it hard to believe anything you post.

Agesilaos wrote:

As to your appeal to Planeaux, had you understood what he wrote and it is not complicated you would have found that once the Prytanny year was tied to the beginning and end of the Festival year it was absolutely fixed. This occurred in 407 BC, once more obfuscation, or plain ignorance, or maybe you think Aristoboulos had aTime-Machine?

I only used Planeaux as an example of use of terminology [the ‘civil calendar’], and the fact that his article is interesting. In any event, try reading Planeaux again! What he actually says about the ‘Conciliar’ year and Festival/civil year is:
“On the other hand, when scholars begin to examine equivalencies between the Athenian Seasonal, Civil and Conciliar Calendars, the problems become exponentially more complex. Established synchronisms between the Athenian Seasonal and Civil Calendars and their Julian equivalents exist only in the broadest form, because of the haphazard process of intercalation (even after the introduction of the Metonic Cycles)."

....and.....

“The Ancient Athenians only loosely followed it. The actual date of Hekatombaion1, that is, the 13th or14th New Moon in succession from the start of the previous year, could occur anywhere from as early as mid-June to as late as mid-August the following year. Thucydides, furthermore, also remains notoriously loose at referencing seasons during his account of the Peloponnesian War.
In addition, with the single exception of the Summer Solstice, no such equations exist for the Conciliar Year. Prytany 1,1 fell consistently, more or less, during the first week of July (prior to 407 BCE), but the Conciliar Year might begin anywhere from mid-Thargelion to late-Hekatombaion.
With the absence of any computations on interest for specific loans, moreover, the exact length of any subsequent Bouletic Month within any given year remains unknown.”

...and see also Pritchett’s paper referred to above for some of the complications.

Looking forward to the BIG point still waiting for my factual errors too.

The point you missed was in Bennett’s work, namely that Macedonian ( and later Seleucid) regnal years were post-dated. ( And it is not just Bennett who recognised this).You missed it a second time despite my pointing you to it and quoting Bennett!
Xenophon wrote Jan 18 :

“As Christopher Bennett states:
“However, it is clear that the list uses a convention that annexes partial years, and that the partial year annexed is normally the remainder of the year in which the king died, even though it was often recorded that the reign ended part way through the year -- i.e. that the reigns are postdated.”

...and his tables here show:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptole ... yry_fr.htm

... see also T Boiy ‘Between High and Low’ pp 85 ff”

As to your factual errors, just look at any of my posts, including the one under reply! Not only do you make factual errors, but your ‘method’ is to just continually repeat them, like a stuck record – witness your claim that Macedon adopted a Babylonian calendar in the 6th/5th C BC, despite there being zero evidence for this.





When you think about, it free-choice is the only possible option.

When you think about it, free choice is never free!

Post by agesilaos » Fri Jan 22, 2016 9:55 pm

Xenophon:Your first error in your basis of calculation is that a ‘regnal year’ begins with the King’s actual date of accession.( imagine the chaos with every King's 'regnal years' being different! ) In fact a ‘regnal year’ always co-incided with the actual year i.e. Dios/October to Dios/October, and so one can’t count regnal years from Daisios to Daisios. This first calculation of yours is therefore incorrect, and must be disregarded.

As usual mere assertion and as usual completely wrong;

I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you – it is you who are “usually” wrong, and who even contradicts himself !!!

......and this is certain, the second year of Philip III was 322/1, since AD 1- 321 (rev 23) mentions a solar eclipse on Phil.02.06.28, 26 September 322 BC; since the Babylonians reckoned from Nisanu to Nisanu, April-April Phil 02 began 4 April 322 and Phil 01 upon Alexander’s death 11 June 323, 1 Simanu/Panemos. No post-dating to Dios here is possible (see T Boiy, Electrum 18, ‘Local and Imperial Dates at the Beginning of the Hellenistic Period’, Krakow 2010, available online as a pdf). We can also be sure that this is standard Macedonian practice, since it is a change from normal Babylonian practice, which would have inserted an accession year. This is also supported by a Ptolemaic papyrus.

On the contrary, Babylonian practice as to regnal years following the death of Alexander III the Great is NOT the same as that preceding his death. Nor is Ptolemaic practice. All attempts to deduce Macedonian regnal years by working back from Babylonian, Ptolemaic, or even Seleucid practices regarding regnal years are doomed to failure, for they all make ASSUMPTIONS for which there is no basis whatever ( as you do – “standard Macedonian practice” is anything but certain, and cannot be deduced from any subsequent, and different, system) .
The fact of the matter is that from the death of Alexander, everything changed. When Ptolemy declared himself ‘Basilieus/King/Pharoah in 305/304 BC, he backdated his regnal years to the date of Alexander’s death, thus introducing an ‘anniversarial’ system to the Egyptian-Macedonian system. As can be seen from your example of Philip Arrhidaeus, the new Babylonian-Macedonian system introduced an ‘ante-datal’ system, counting the part-year as belonging to the new King’s reign – though confusingly, the year of Alexander’s death counted as both regnal year 14 of Alexander, and regnal year 1 of Philip Arrhidaeus ( see Bennett; Babylonian calendar table), as if they couldn’t make up their mind as to whether to continue to post-date or ante-date afresh. ( Prior to that in Achaemenid times, they had a ‘non-counted’ accession year – the part year – followed by a post-dated system. This system would be changed again by the Seleucids, when they acceded, backdated to 311. There are many other complications and interested readers are referred to Bennett.
The point is that all these later systems – Egyptian-Macedonian, Babylonian-Macedonian, Seleucid etc, whilst using Macedonian nomenclature, provide no evidence whatever as to the original system in use in Philip and Alexander’s Macedon. As Samuel says in “Greek and Roman Chronology Vol 1 part 7 Chapter 4” :-
“Alexander’s conquests and the subsequent settlements of Greeks and Macedonians in the territories of the east brought to the Successor kingdoms a number of calendric systems based on on the Macedonian nomenclature for months and days. Although Macedonian month-names were used extensively in these areas the actual calendars differed drastically, depending as they did upon differing rapprochements made between Macedonian and local systems [There was no single system throughout the Achaemenid domains, but many local ones]. Many of these local systems were very well attested, and we can see clearly how they worked. On the other hand, the [original] Macedonian calendar itself, that is, the calendar which might be called “pure” Macedonian, as it worked in Macedonia itself, or at most, in old Greece is very poorly attested....”

Thus all attempts to ‘reconstruct’ the Macedonian calendar, or regnal year system, by working back from Hellenistic systems are futile. Only evidence prior to Alexander’s death can help, and there is no direct evidence at all.




Agesilaos wrote:

Bennet writes:
“pEleph 3, pEleph 4 and the  of Elaphion
Contemporary data for the start of the regnal year are given by two Greek papyri from year 41 (pEleph 3 (Artemisios) and pEleph 4 (Hyperberetaios) -- translations here). These two papyri concern transactions involving the same individuals, which gives us an opportunity to determine which one was written first. This would tell us whether Artemisios was before Hyperberetaios (favouring a Dios-based year) or Hyperberetaios was before Artemisios (favouring a Daisios-based year)...........
[lengthy irrelevant quote deleted]

.......Involved but if, as Bennett and Samuel reckon, Hyperberetaios yr 41 comes before Artemisios yr 41, this is proof further that the Macedonians used an anniversarial system. Whilst you may find this confusing, they clearly did not, nor can I see what is confusing about it.”
As pointed out above, the original Macedonian system of calendar and regnal years cannot be re- constructed from Ptolemaic contract dates, for the Egyptian-Macedonian system was vastly different.

The Daisios to Daisios table is to demonstrate that your model cannot be right, typically, you have missed the point. Still that is something of a leitmotif, Bennett demonstrates that there were various systems in use in Ptolemaic Egypt, one of which was the standard Macedonian anniversary system, also proved by AD 1- 321; before screaming ‘error’ at others you really ought to check your facts.

It is true that there were local calendars in use in Egypt, as well as the Ptolemaic system, but there was no such thing as “the standard Macedonian anniversary system", and I defy you to provide any evidence that there was. The Ptolemaic anniversarial system was the product of the hybrid Egyptian/Macedonian system. I never “scream”, but try to choose my words relatively calmly, without the emotion and abuse of your posts. As I have pointed out before, I do check my facts most carefully – though that is no guarantee that there are no occasional errors. At least I don’t totally contradict myself, in order to pursue the argument of the moment.

Agesilaos:The tables you link to concern the reckoning of the chronographers not dating formulae or the expression of reign lengths in historians; it explains the round number in the Oxyrhynchos Chronographer’s Apprentice but says nothing about Aristoboulos’ and Kleitarchos’ statements of the length of the reign of Alexander. Neither can be based on a chronographic source as both include odd months; chronographic sources all give round years since just as one end of a regnal year is annexed the other is donated in their system, whose function is only to give simple references to identify each year. They are therefore irrelevant for finding the month that anything happened. Perhaps you want to argue that Niarchos, a contemporary and the main actor in the events took his note that he set out from the mouths of the Indos in Alexander’s eleventh year from a chronographic source but, aside from the inherent unlikelihood of such a scenario, there is no indication that there was a Macedonian chronographer writing at this time, if there were the confusions of the Parian marble for Alexander’s campaigns would be inexplicable, the note is therefore Niarchos’ own using the standard anniversarial dating of Macedonian practice, as far as it can be demonstrated.

I flatly deny that “standard anniversarial dating” was ever pre-Hellenistic Macedonian practice, and I repeat my challenge to you to produce ANY evidence pre-dating Alexander’s death which supports such an assumption, which is itself quite a stretch. The above paragraph does not seem to make sense, and you seem to be confusing calendric years ( consisting of years and months) and regnal years ( expressed in whole years). In fact you don’t seem to be able to grasp what I am drawing attention to.

The tables in question, I have linked to once already, but for convenience repeat here:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptole ... yry_fr.htm

.....following this statement by Bennett :
“Jacoby argued that Porphyry's regnal years are postdated, i.e. that Porphyry dates a reign as starting in the first full year after accession and finishing in the year in which the king died, which year was counted as a complete final year.
This is unquestionably the system used in his account of the Macedonian kings (FGrH 260 F 3(4)) following the death of Alexander III:”


There then follows a link in red to Porphyry’s table of Macedonian years, which as Bennett states undoubtedly shows Macedonian use of a post-dated system of regnal years, running from ‘New Year’s day’ – 1 Dios – to the end of the Macedonian year.
Porphyry( as passed on by Eusebius) is reckoned to be accurate, and he gives regnal years for Philip (24 years i.e. 1 Dios 359/358 – 336 BC, counting 336 as Philip’s last year) and Alexander(more than 12 years – 1 Dios 336/335 - 323, counting 323 as Alexander’s last year, who died 28 Daisios/11 June), as well as Philip Arrhidaeus, which follow this system.

Although indirect, this is the only real evidence we have for the regnal year system in use in Macedonia prior to Alexander’s death, which was evidently 'post-dated'.
As I stated earlier, this is consistent with the bulk of the other evidence – astronomical, sources, arithmetic, etc

Agesilaos wrote:

Xenophon:Notwithstanding suggestions that the battle was fought the day after the eclipse, let us assume that it took place 11 days later, as the Babylonian chronicles and Plutarch [Alexander XXXI ] say, with Plutarch perhaps indirectly drawing on the chronicles here (though in “Camillus’ XIX.3 he gives the date of Gaugemala as 26th Boedromion/Sept, so its date cannot be 'certain')

.


Suggestions that the battle immediately followed the eclipse can be rejected outright, there is no need to ‘assume’ what two sources tell us, one independent and contemporary, unless one is perversely trying to cast doubt on their statements. Plutarch does not mention September, of course, only Boedromion and that the eclipse occurred ‘about the beginning of the Mysteries’, combined with his note in Camillus we get a date of 15 Boedromion for the approximate start of the Mysteries, which is correct and in this year fell on 20th September, since that was the date of the eclipse. All these dates are ‘certain’ and consistent, the Athenians were two days out of step with the Babylonians.

Since I was accepting the above position, why bother to make a pointless argument out of nothing? [rhetorical question! ]. Whilst siding with you on this, I merely explained that this date for Gaugemala is not universally accepted.


Agesilaos wrote:

Xenophon:I disagree.’Vulgus’ has many meanings and in a military context ‘host’ is clearly apt, and there can be no doubt in any event and on any translation that Justin has Alexander addressing Philip’s whole army, Macedonians and allies. Let us have no more ‘red herrings’ over exact translations to distract from the major point here

On what basis do think your disagreement has any worth? Have you suddenly learned Latin? The ‘exact translation’ can never be a ‘red-herring’ unless you are trying to push a false one. There is no major point but in your muddled mind.

I rather think your last sentence applies to yourself. I have often thought you either don’t read, or fail to understand what I plainly write – your claims to read and write plain English notwithstanding. What I wrote was :
“I disagree.’Vulgus’ has many meanings and in a military context ‘host’ is clearly apt, ( see Perseus; Lewis and Short Latin dictionary for 'vulgus' as describing the mass of the common soldiery of Alexander's army "C. Militari gratiora vulgo, the common soldiery, Curt. 3, 6, 19: “vulgo militum acceptior,” id. 7, 2, 33 - clearly Yardley's translation is perfectly correct in a military context),and there can be no doubt in any event and on any translation that Justin has Alexander addressing Philip’s whole army, Macedonians and allies. Philip's whole army was therefore mustered and indicate his intention to commence the main invasion of the Persian Empire immediately following the celebrations ( a clear argument against October, late in the year). Let us have no more ‘red herrings’ over exact translations to distract from the major point here.”

The several latin translations referring to soldiers as ‘vulgus’ comes from Lewis and Short, not me. Quibbling over translations can be, and is in this instance, a ‘red herring’ designed to divert discussion away from the point – that the whole army, not a ‘crowd’, was present at Philip’s death and addressed by Alexander on his accession.

Agesilaos wrote:

A muddle which continues with ‘Makedones’ you still cannot produce any ancient evidence


Diod XVIII 12 ii
…while he himself, taking thirteen thousand Macedonians and six hundred horsemen (for Macedonia was short of citizen soldiers because of the number of those who had been sent to Asia)…
αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἀναλαβὼν Μακεδόνας μὲν μυρίους καὶ τρισχιλίους, ἱππεῖς ἑξακοσίους ῾ἐσπάνιζεγὰρ ἡ Μακεδονία στρατιωτῶν πολιτικῶν διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἀπεσταλμένων εἰς τὴν Ἀσίαν

Diod. XVIII 16 i
16 1 While these things were going on, Perdiccas, taking with him King Philip and the royal army, campaigned against Ariarathes, the ruler of Cappadocia. His failure to take orders from the Macedonians had been overlooked by Alexander, owing to the struggle with Darius and its distractions, and he had enjoyed a very long respite as king of Cappadocia.
ἅμα δὲ τούτοις πραττομένοις Περδίκκας, ἔχων μεθ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ τόν τε βασιλέα Φίλιππον καὶ τὴν βασιλικὴν δύναμιν,ἐστράτευσεν ἐπὶ Ἀριαράθην τὸν Καππαδοκίας δυνάστην. οὗτος γὰρ οὐ προσέχων τοῖς Μακεδόσιν ὑπὸ μὲνἈλεξάνδρου παρεωράθη διὰ τοὺς περὶ Δαρεῖον ἀγῶνας καὶ περισπασμούς, ἀναστροφὴν δὲ πολυχρόνιον εἶχεκυριεύων τῆς Καππαδοκίας.

More carelessness on your part, I see – and failure to read/understand what I wrote, namely :

“As to ancient evidence, try Diodorus[XVIII.16.1] where the ‘Makedones’ are ‘hoi basilikoi dynameis’/The Kings forces; or [XVII.109.1] where Alexander’s veterans are ‘politon/citizens’; or [XVIII.12.2] – the famous passage where Macedonia is described as being short of ‘stratiton politikon’/citizen-soldiers literally ( Though Macedon had plenty of manpower generally). For modern discussion see Hammond “Connotations of Macedonia and Macedones” or E.M. Anson’s “The meaning of the term Makedones".

XVII 109 i
He selected the oldest of his soldiers who were Macedonians and released them from service; there were ten thousand of these.
αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἐπιλέξας τοὺς πρεσβυτάτους τῶν πολιτῶν ἀπέλυσε τῆς στρατείας,ὄντας ὡς μυρίους.


These simply do not make the equation you require, but do not bother discussing it everyone can see you have no point, and the usual smoke screen of ‘communis opinio’ does not cover the lack of any evidence.

Oh but they do; In Diod XVIII.12.2 the ‘Makedones’ are specifically citizen soldiers; VII.109.1 specifically calls Alexander’s veteran soldiers ‘politon/citizens’- (The loeb translation is not entirely accurate – see the Greek you yourself quote above), and in the other passage the ‘Makedones’ are the King’s forces, who are specifically both citizens and soldiers in the other two passages. How plain do you need it ?

And immediately a misconstruing of the ‘communis opinio’ I mentioned, was saying ‘after Bosworth’s ‘Commentary’, ie 1980, in anyway confusing? Seeming so since you cite CAH 1927 and then fail to realise that Dios IS ‘late summer early fall’.

Oh? What sort of methodology immediately dismisses all views prior to that of Bosworth in 1980? They are not invalidated by Bosworth’s (incorrect) viewpoint. Even taking post-1980 views, there is far more support for a ‘Spring’ date than October. In addition to those I have previously referred to, in the chronology on p.234 of “Philip of Macedon”(1981) – an excellent work – Philip’s death is referred to as taking place in the Spring of 336 BC. This book is the joint work of Andronicos, Cawkwell, Dell, Edson, Ellis, Griffith, Hammond ( who later came round to Bosworth’s view) Le Rider, Leveque, and Sakellariou , edited by Hatzopoulos and Loukopoulos – all distinguished scholars. Sufficient ‘communis opinio’ for you? I can give more examples if you wish.....

In short you have thrown much into the mix to distract and obfuscate, why drag the fifth century or second century Athenian calendar into it?

I think not....it was you who introduced Athenian calendars, Meton etc into the discussion as yet another irrelevant digression/distraction/obfuscation:
Agesilaos wrote 24 Dec page 7 :

“Yet the Greeks had been aware of Babylonian astronomy much earlier, Meton introduced his 19 year cycle in 432BC clearly based on Babylonian models which Darius I had accepted in his reform of the Achaemenid calendar (certainly by 503 BC). This may well have been used in Macedonia from this time too, since the Kingdom was heavily influenced by, if not under the control of, the Persian Empire at the time.”

....most of which, in particular the latter, is unlikely in the extreme, for reasons now gone over several times.

All the very solid evidence declares that the Macedonians of Alexander’s time counted their king’s years from the date of their accession......

There is no evidence I am aware of for this whatsoever beyond wishful thinking ( and evidently you too are unaware of any, since I have asked for it and none has been forthcoming – surmises derived from later systems are of course not actual evidence). Such evidence as we have suggests that originally, Macedonian regnal years were ‘post dated’ ( see in particular Bennett here:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptole ... yry_fr.htm

....referring to Porphyry, ( see also above)

.... and that Aristoboulos and Kleitarchos’ lengths for Alexander’s reign must take precedence as not only do they fit most of the evidence from the nearest contemporary sources, the later ones that seem to contradict them either belong to a chronographic tradition which did not count the reigns by the month but only rounded years.

If you go back as long ago as page 6, you will see that Aristoboulos’ statement [“12 years and eight months”] is not disputed, rather your faulty arithmetical calculations allegedly derived from it – your usual tactic of repetition instead of evidence is evident here yet again. As for Kleitarchos, your reference to him is simply surmise that he is the source of Diodorus’XVII.117.4 “...a reign of 12 years and seven months.”[ and c.f. Porphyry, “more than 12 years”referred to earlier.] Again not disputed, it is simply your ‘countback’ that is in error. Equally, if one were to count by ‘rounded years’ and a post-dated regnal year system [so that the 13th year is counted as Alexander’s], then the “13 years” of P.Oxyrhyncus is equally correct. Any confusion simply arises from different methods of reckoning.

Plutarch’s birthday in Loos is at odds with all the evidence and stands unsourced. Just as I said at the beginning of your desperate fugue. Let’s hope you take the time to get some of your facts straight before your bigger fish is served, else it will be as cod as this.

As per my post of 22 Jan, which I’ll repeat here for convenience below, see Bennett’s full discussion on the subject of Alexander’s birth – which is quite contrary to Agesilaos’assertion:

"POSTSCRIPT:

Agesilaos wrote:

Only Plutarch gives Loos 6th for Alexander’s birthday, which is at odds with both Aristoboulos’ date in Dios and the chronographer’s in Daisios.

It is highly probable that Plutarch's date is correct, and it is generally accepted over Justin's date , and the other two possibilities referred to in our sources.

For a detailed examination of this, and why the dates other than Plutarch's are highly unlikely, see the discussion within Chris Bennett's paper:
"Alexandria and the Moon:Addenda et Corrigenda " which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.academia.edu/1134799/Alexand ... Corrigenda.

Sorry, no further correspondence on the subject of Alexander's birthday entered into......

New study on the knee injury of the Tomb I skeleton: https://www.cureus.com/articles/11278-t ... -macedonia

I saw the skeleton when it was first displayed back in 1979 at the museum in Thessaloniki, before it was moved to the tombs at Vergina. You could clearly see the break in the leg. The novel I am writing now has some of Philip in it including when he received this serious injury so I've doing a lot of research about it and about the medical techniques used in treating his injury.

gepd wrote: ↑Tue May 15, 2018 10:42 am New study on the knee injury of the Tomb I skeleton: https://www.cureus.com/articles/11278-t ... -macedonia

Sorry, but this study by Bartsiokas et al is hopelessly wrong as this thread has demonstrated......