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:
- FROM THE TRIBE KINGS (PHYLOBASILIKON),
- FROM THOSE ARRANGED MONTH BY MONTH (EK TON KATA MENA),
- FROM THOSE ON NO FIXED DAY (EK TON ME RHETEI),
AND - FROM THE STELAI, OR
- FROM THE DRAFT PROPOSALS (EK TON S[TELON] OR
EK TON S[UGGRAPHON].
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.
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