ATHENIAN RELIGION: A HISTORY. Robert Parker
Chapter 4: SOLON'S CALENDAR
(D. B. Levine)
Note that the second paragraph begins with "Solon's" in quotation marks. The reason for this is that we do not know if the calendar which is called Solon's is actually a document that dates from his time. It was common for Athenians to attribute to Solon (a popular lawgiver and reformer of the early 6th century BCE) any laws (religious and other) of the 6th and 5th century which were otherwise without attribution. Parker says it is a good idea to speak of the 'sixth-century code' instead.
Sources are a problem, because we only have a few real details about the calendar in inscriptions and quotations in literary sources.
One main literary source is the orator Lysias, composer of a speech "Against Nicomachus" (Lysias 30), in which Nicomachus faces charges of inserting and erasing laws into the original laws of Solon, which he was supposed to transcribe. He took too long, did not submit to an audit, and, according to his prosecutor, was a generally unreliable citizen, perhaps of servile origin. The speech claims that Nicomachus included expensive requirements that drained away monies that should have been used for 'ancestral' (patrioi) sacrifices which Solon's calendar had specified. The prosecutor wants to get rid of the expensive sacrifices which Nicomachos alledgely inserted, and revert to Solon's original calendar.
"I am informed that he alleges that I am guilty of impiety in seeking to abolish the sacrifices (hos asebo kataluon tas thusias)... But in fact I am merely claiming that he should obey the code established and patent to all; and I am surprised at his not observing that, when he taxes me with impiety for saying that we ought to perform the sacrifices named in the tablets and pillars (ton kyrbeon kai ton stelon) as directed in the regulations, he is accusing the city as well: for they are what you have decreed. And then, sir, if you feel these to be hard words, surely you must attribute grievous guilt to those citizens who used to sacrifice solely in accordance with the tablets... Now our ancestors, by sacrificing in accordance with the tablets, have handed down to us a city superior in greatness and prosperity to any other in Greece; so that it behooves us to perform the same sacrifices as they did, if for no other reason that that of the success which has resulted from those rites. And how could a man show greater piety than mine, when I demand, first that our sacrifices be performed according to our ancestral rules, and second that they be those which tend to promote the interests of the city, and finally those which the people have decreed and which we shall be able to afford out of the public revenue? But you, Nicomachus, have done the opposite of this: by entering in your copy a greater number than had been ordained you have caused the public revenue to be expended on these, and hence to be deficient for our ancestral offerings For example, last year some sacrifices, costing three talents, were in abeyance, though they were among those inscribed on the tablets. And it cannot be said that the revenues of the State were insufficient; for if this man had not entered sacrifices to an excess amounting to six talents, which would have been enough for our ancestral offerings, and moreover the State would have had a surplus of thee talents...
"Reflect, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, that when we proceed in accordance with the regulations, all the ancestral offerings are made; but when we are guided by the pillars as copied by this man, numerous rites are abolished. [i.e. some of the 'ancestral rites' are dropped because the necessary funds have to be spent on the rites that he has foisted into the code]. Whereupon this sacrilegious wretch runs about saying that his transcription was piety and not parsimony, and that if you do not approve of his work you had better erase it: by this means he thinks to persuade you of his innocence."
The kurbeis (perhaps wooden tablets) and stelai (marble pillars) represented the older and newer 'published' versions of Solon's laws. Here is what Aristotle wrote about the kurbeis of Solon (Ath. Pol. 7.1, Levine's translation): "And he established a constitution and set up other laws (nomous), and they stopped using the laws (thesmoi) established by Draco, except for those of homicide. And having written down the laws they set them up on kurbeis in the Portico of the King (Stoa Basileos) and everyone swore to use them." Descriptions of the kurbeis generally seem to indicate that they were triangular tablets, perhaps of wood, set up on a rotating pyramid-like construction.
Parker uses the little evidence we have from the tablets to show that there were four rubrics about the sacrifices of the revised code:
The month-by-month calendar "defined the public ritual year," and therefore was "surely of central importance" (46).
Parker suggests that the deme calendars (calendars of the small villages in Attica) imitated this sixth-century calendar, when, for instance, they recorded their own month-by-month sacrifices and rites. These were short entries: "In [the month] Hekatombaion. On the tenth. For Athena, a sheep." Such an entry could be augmented by specific requirements for the victim, ritual details, distribution of meat, and price.
The sacrifices on "no fixed day" show that "Solon recognized movable feasts." (definition: a religious feast that does not occur on the same date each year.) Such might be main agricultural festivals, as in Rome.
It is not possible to determine how much innovation Solon introduced into the laws. We can only speculate, for instance that he gave prominence to the Genesia festival (annual commemoration of dead parents) in order to counteract the influence of powerful families which had previously celebrated this festival in private. The same may be said for the festival of Aphrodite Pandemos: that it might have been a popularizing motive that gave prominence to this cult, or that he established a public board of oracle interpreters "in rivalry to the traditional body of Eupatrid (aristocratic noble) exegetes." (49)
Solon was 'the first of a series of Attic (and non-Attic) legislators who sought to restrict the ostentation of private funerals.' (49)
Why record the ritual calendar in writing at all? I was part of the laws (nomima), and therefore was included with all laws which the Athenians wrote down in the sixth century. There were no distinctions between religious and secular laws. There was an "indissoluble unity of 'church and state' in Greece, powers that could never be at odds because they could never be clearly distinguished." (54)
The "striking contrast" between Solon's calendar and those of the ancient Near East is that the eastern calendars are very long, elaborate and contain immense detail. Greek calendars are short, and leave much of the 'how-to' up to the citizens, who remembered the details without having to have them written down. In fact, the name for religious administrators was "sacred rememberancers" (hieromnemones) (52). "Elaborate ritual texts are the hallmark of a more specialized priesthood and a more autonomous religious order than those of Greece." (54). In other words, the Greeks were amateurs performing their rituals. There were few hereditary priesthoods in Greece, but many in the Near East. The Greeks did not conduct their religion 'by the book' as, for instance Judaism and Christianity do.
The main function of the religious calendar "was to define the division of ritual privileges and responsibilities." In other words, the calendars would stop arguments about who gets what part of the sacrifice.
Return to the Main Page: CLST 4003H. ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION. Spring, 2002.