It's not like me to ask a question but i really don't know how people in ancient times measured dates until the romans invented the first calender? This question is mainly aimed at Aimless but anyone who knows the answer please respond.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2004

Answers

Thanks Aimless and you Jon for responding to my question.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 2004

Ive also heard that the ancient greeks past years through seasons such as 7 winters ago etc. I don't know whether this is true or not.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 2004

The ancient Greeks had a yearly calendar, so they could easily describe any date by the day of the month it fell in - similar to our "22nd of March" or "4th of July".

Telling years apart was much trickier. For a long time the Athenians described what year they were referring to by who was the archon in that year. Other Greeks had similar sorts of makeshifts. This idea was patterned after the Egyptians, who described a year by who was pharoah and the year of his reign (third year of Necbatano's reign, or what have you).

The first Greek to come up with a better system was Thuycidides. For his famous history of the Peloponnesian War he used the year of the first Olympiad (I can't recall exactly, but something like 770 BC) as his "stake in the ground" - rather like our conception of the year 1 AD - and then counted years by Olympiads. This happened in about 410 BC.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2004