Greek

As the cities of ancient Greece progressed to their classical maturity, the need arose among them for a chronological system on a universally understood basis. In the archaic period, genealogies of local monarchs or aristocrats sufficed for the historical tradition of a given area, and events were associated with the lifetimes of well-known ancestors or “heroes.” The synoikismos (founding of the united city) of Athens took place “in the time of Theseus”; the Spartan ephorate (chief magistracy) was established “in the reign of King Theopompus.” When the city-states adopted annual magistracies, the years were designated by the eponymous officials—“in the archonship of Glaucippus” or “when Pleistolas was ephor.” This was the local usage throughout classical and Hellenistic Greece, the title of the magistrate varying in different cities. Sometimes tenure of a priesthood provided the chronological basis, as at Argos, where years were dated as the nth of the (named) priestess of Hera. The correctness of the series was a matter first of memory and later of careful record. The list of annual archons at Athens was known back to 683 bc (in modern terms). Lists of dynasties also amounted to recorded folk memory, and in all genealogical reckoning there is a point, for modern critics, at which acceptable tradition shades into myth. Corruption of the records was introduced through error or political design, and traditions often conflicted.

Chronology became subject to systematization when cities felt a national need for accurate clarification of their past. In literature the growth of historiography initiated a search for a method of dating that could be universally applied and acknowledged. In the 5th and 4th centuries, local historians used local magistracies as their framework; research was devoted to rationalization of conflicting traditions and production of definitive lists. Charon of Lampsacus, perhaps in the early 5th century, compiled a record of Spartan magistrates; Hellanicus of Lesbos, author of the earliest history of Athens, wrote on the priestesses of Argos. Lists of victors in the great Olympic games were valid for all Greece, pointing the way to the widely accepted reckoning by Olympiads. The Athenian Philochorus was the latest (early 3rd century bc) of compilers of Olympionikai.

The 5th-century historian Herodotus relied for his chronology principally upon the reckoning by generations used by his informants, conventionally accepted as showing three generations to a century. In some cases a 40-year, or other, reckoning was used, and varying traditions sometimes produced difficulty of synchronism. Thucydides, writing “contemporary” history, recognized the chronological problems involved. He dated the beginning of the Peloponnesian War by the Athenian, Spartan, and Argive systems and thenceforward marked the passage of time by seasonal indications. Synchronization was not helped by the fact that the official year began at different times in different cities. In later historical writing the impossibility of accurately coordinating the Athenian and Roman years resulted in serious chronological difficulties.

The system of dating by Athenian archons came to be recognized outside Attica as of wider value, but, in the Hellenistic period, Alexandrian scholarship, represented especially by Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the “father of chronology,” was instrumental in promoting the use of the Olympiads as an acceptable system, reckoning a four-year period from each celebration of the Olympic Games. Timaeus of Tauromenium (c. 356–260 bc) was the first historian to employ it, but it was little used outside historical writing. Aristotle had been concerned to identify the generation of the first Olympiad, accepted as 776 bc on modern reckoning. For convenience, the beginning of the Olympic year was equated with the summer solstice, when the Athenian year also began. This makes it generally necessary for a Greek year to receive a double date in modern terms (e.g., the death of the philosopher Epicurus in 271/270 bc). Eratosthenes’ system produced tables of dates, from which, for example, the fall of Troy could be dated to 1184/83 bc. The “Parian Marble” of 264/263 bc is an inscribed record of events from the time of Cecrops, first king of Athens, reckoning years between the date of the inscription, fixed by the Athenian archon, and each event concerned. Some cities inscribed lists of their eponymous magistrates; the Athenians were the first to do so c. 425 bc. A list from Sicilian Tauromenium originally spanned some 300 years. The regnal years of the Hellenistic monarchs or the count from a fixed event (a city foundation or refoundation) also provided acceptable chronological reckoning often useful for more than contemporary or local purposes.

The use of these chronological possibilities is best seen in historians using the annalistic method, of whom Diodorus Siculus is most notable. In the Christian period, Eusebius, followed by St. Jerome, began the work of reconciling all these indications to the Judaic tradition and produced the foundation of chronology in terms of the Julian calendar upon which modern historians have constructed their framework.

For modern scholarship the problem, in E.J. Bickerman’s words, is “how we know Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 bc.” Before 480 bc, no date can be precise in terms of the Julian calendar unless confirmed by astronomical phenomena. Archaic chronology relies upon the typology of Corinthian pottery in relation to the foundation dates for Greek colonies in Sicily implicit in Thucydides, book vi. Julian dates given for this period (e.g., for the tyranny of Peisistratus in Athens) stem from a complex combination of ancient chronographic tradition with modern archaeology, acceptable only with appropriate reserve. Literary tradition gives the succession of Athenian archons from 480 to 294 bc. The regnal, era, and Olympiad years also provide dates within a 12-month period. Closer dating is seldom possible unless the sources give precise information in calendric terms, as occasionally in literature and regularly in Athenian and Egyptian public documents. Even these are not translatable into Julian months and days unless coordinated with knowledge of contemporary solar or lunar phenomena and of possible official interference with the calendar.

Roman

The establishment of a sound chronology for Roman history, as for Greek, depends on the assessment of the evidence available, which falls into two categories—literary and archaeological.