Greek - Chronology

GREEK - CHRONOLOGY The difficulty besetting Greek chronology, for ancient and mod ern investigators alike, is the absence, for the earlier periods especially, of a universally understood era, corresponding to our reckoning, B.C. or A.D., or the Muslim, dating from the Hejira. Generally speaking, each state had its own fashion of dating, the usual method of specifying time being to name the annual magistrate who was then in office, as "in the archonship of Apsephion," or a king, priest etc., as "in the reign of King Agis," "in the third year of such a one's tenure of office as priestess of Hera at Argos." This had the grave disadvantage that unless a list of the functionaries in question was available, the date was unintelligible. Hence the best-known of them, the Athenian archons, were most commonly referred to, and often several parallel dates were given, as "when Chrysis had been priestess at Argos for 47 years, Aenesuis being then ephor at Sparta, Pytho dorus having yet four months left of his archonship at Athens" (Thucydides, ii., 2, I ; =April, 431 B.c.) .

Dating by Olympiads.

Gradually, however, the system of dating by Olympiads came into use; this was much more conven ient, for the successive celebrations of the festival at Olympia were numbered, not merely named, and the date of the first was conventionally fixed at 776 B.C. of our reckoning. This is due largely to the Alexandrian chronologists, Eratosthenes and the rest, who also drew up the received list of Olympiads. There re mained, however, a further difficulty, viz., that various Greek civic years started at different times (see CALENDAR : Greek) ; hence there was often used a conventional Olympiad, beginning at the Attic new year, the summer solstice.

The diligence of the Alexandrians resulted in a fairly satisfac tory chronology being drawn up for the fully historical periods, Le., back to about 60o B.C. ; from about 500 onwards the number of dates which are seriously doubtful, where the ancient evidence survives, is comparatively small, although minor divergencies are common. But for earlier times, and especially before the beginning of the series of Olympiads (itself not very dependable until Olymp. 50), even the ancient investigators had but few documents to go upon, and were obliged to trust largely to genealogies. By com paring these, they made out a pre-historic and proto-historic chronology, arrived at by allowing three generations to a century. Supposing the genealogies to be authentic and complete, this was a tolerably accurate method; but, although they contained a large element of real tradition, we know enough of them to be sure that they were often interpolated, telescoped by the omission of obscure persons, and otherwise corrupted; so that the earlier dates, such as that of the fall of Troy, must be taken as being, at best, very rough approximations.

The ancient chronologists are represented, for us. by a few historians, such as Diodorus of Sicily, who adopt the annalistic method, and by the Christian chronologists, such as Eusebius and his Latin translator and continuator, S. Jerome, also by later writers, such as Iulius Africanus and Georgius Syncellus. The desire of apologists to prove the Biblical revelation earlier than any other led to the prominence of this branch of learning among them, and to the creation of a new, Hebraizing chronology, made by combining the existing systems with data from the Old Testa ment. Although uncritical and biased, these writers are of im mense value to modern historians of antiquity.

Contribution of Archaeology.—Further help is given by the results of modern archaeology. By careful and minute study of the details of artistic technique, the stratification of material re mains of all sorts, the styles of pottery, coins, and other common objects, and comparison with the comparatively few pieces which are in some way dated (e.g., by bearing the name of an owner or dedicator whose epoch is accurately known) it is possible, not only to determine often within a few years and not infrequently with much greater exactness the date of objects found, but also by working backwards to come to reasonable conclusions as to the epoch of many events long previous to documentary history, whereof only vague accounts, largely mythological, had come down to us. Thus, the stratification of the seven cities at Hissar lik, the ancient Troy, has given us a relative chronology, or order of events, for the history of that place; while careful comparison of the finds there with those from Cretan and Mycenaean sites, and of these again with certain Egyptian and other documents which can be at least approximately dated, is gradually enabling us to fix, at any rate within a century or so, the absolute date of Agamemnon's expedition. But at present such dates must be largely provisional, and subject to revision, sometimes of a sweep ing kind, in the light of further discoveries. For instance, there are differences of some four centuries in the dating of the Dorian invasion, and even doubts as to its historicity.

It is usual, in giving an ancient date, to extend the Julian period backwards and speak, for instance, of March 2, 290 B.C., meaning the day which would have been so styled if the Greeks of that time had had our calendar and could have foreseen when our era would begin. As these imaginary Julian years frequently cut across the real Greek ones, it is best, when the year only is given, to use a double date and say, for instance, 501/500 B.C.

In dealing with events in late Greek history (Roman and Byzan tine epochs) we frequently find non-Greek systems used, such as the Julian calendar. For these, see under Roman Chronology.

The most important ancient works are cited in the text. For modern authorities, see CALENDAR: Greek and GREECE: History. Of modern writers on chronology, Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, 3 vols., 1834) is still useful, although needing much correction in detail.