The Attic Calendar & Ancient Athenian Festivals

The Attic calendar a calendar used by the ancient Athenians. It consisted of 12 months and marked their religious festivals. A separate calendar was used for political events, but the religious calendar was tied into the natural cycle of panting and harvesting.

The new year starts with the new moon before the summer solstice. Which was June 2nd in 2011 and will be June 19th 2011. Each new moon after that marks the beginning of the next month. 

I blogged about the last Athenian holiday, The Sacred Marriage Day of Zeus & Hera, and will continue to calculate the 2012 dates that the Athenian festivals would have fallen on. If anyone is interested in learning more about these ancient pagan holidays, I highly recommend reading Festivals of the Athenians by H. W. Parke! Using information in the book you can work out the dates of the Attic calendar yourself. Its quite fun!

The calendar wasn’t perfect and every so often, the Athenians would have to repeat the month of Poseidon to make sure their festivals stayed with the natural cycles. This year is a leap year, and I think it would be more accurate to repeat a month this year. I’m also basing this on the fact that otherwise, the festivals will occur far too early. So all of my 2012 festival dates are estimates, because it wasn’t an actual science, even back in ancient Greece.

The next festival will be in honor of Dionysus!