S.’s over-arching aim in this latest addition to the growing bibliography on the ancient calendar is not, he says, to present the calendars of antiquity as a catalogue, but to demonstrate their centrality to social history, and in particular as ‘a constitutive component of culture and world views’. An introduction defines the topic (what is, and is not, a calendar); notes the generally scanty sources (literary, epigraphic and documentary); describes the underlying methodology (‘My general approach … has been to avoid speculative models and remain as close as possible to the explicit evidence’) and theory (a touch of structuralism in Chapter 4 and post-colonial theory in Chapter 6, and generally the concept of globalisation); and surveys previous ‘false’ models and theories (with purely astronomical models in particular being discarded as major influences on calendar development, and evolutionary development from one type to another being subordinated to broader socio-political tendencies).

This is not a book about the technicalities of calendar construction. As the subtitle indicates (though I wonder if in back-to-front fashion), it is instead a story about how calendars developed in the ancient western world under the influences of the coincident development of societies into empires.

Following the introduction, the book is divided into two almost equal parts. The first takes as its theme the rise of fixed calendars in place of ‘flexible’ ones. Separate chapters are devoted to the calendars of Greece (but the story is inevitably predominantly that of Athens’ calendars), Babylonia and Egypt, before a chapter is devoted to the rise of fixed calendars in these same regions plus Rome. Having charted the institution of fixed calendars and the ultimate dominance of the Julian, S. uses the second part of the book innovatively to flip the coin over and examine calendrical diversity within the imperial contexts of the Near East and Rome, taking the story down to the Christian Easter controversies. He suggests that diversion from the imperial norm may be interpreted as indications of political subversion and dissidence. While the development of empire gives S. the overarching theme on which he hangs his story of the calendars of antiquity, another useful strand, which connects both parts of the book and utilises S.’s specialist expertise, is his concentration on Near Eastern calendar issues, from Babylonia through Israel/Judaea to Qumran. A conclusion draws the book to a final ‘grand statement’ that emphasises again the usefulness of calendars to social historians. A bibliography and index complete the work.

There are many aspects of this useful book which will attract both calendar specialists and ancient historians, and a review of this size cannot do justice to them all. In what follows I pick up on some elements which interest me in particular.

The flexibility, or fluidity, noted in the calendars is not entirely due to the use of the inconstant moon as the regulator on months and year, since the sun serves that purpose in Egypt. Rather – if we take S. as our guide and the Greek calendars (pp. 25–70) as an example – it is partly a matter of astronomical imprecision (if the month started with observation of the new moon, as is generally accepted, when was the new moon sighted?); partly a matter of irregularities, such as those caused by political interference; and partly a matter of the uncoordinated nature of Greek calendars from one state to another (indeed, the lack of uniformity is even greater than S. concedes, since the start of the year itself was not a matter of interstate agreement). But attempts at regularisation seem to have been made, and S.’s sifting of the arguments of Osborne and Müller for the use of a Metonic cycle to regularise intercalation in the Hellenistic calendar of Athens leads to the tentative conclusion ‘that intercalation was at least well regulated in Athens, even if not necessarily cyclical’ (p. 42).

The story of the Babylonian lunar calendar is very different, as it is one of the spread of a uniform calendar over a very wide geographical area by virtue of the empire-building activities of various kings and dynasties. S.’s chapter is split between two lengthy discussions, one on the question of how the beginning of the month was fixed (observation vs prediction), the other on the development ultimately of a regular, nineteen-year cycle of intercalation. Overall this is a story of the imposition of a degree of regularity that by and large appears to be missing from the Greek world (if one discounts arguments for the use of the Metonic cycle). S. discusses the development of the intercalary regulator partly on the basis of an unpublished list of intercalated years drawn up by C. Walker at the British Museum. This makes scrutiny difficult for those who do not have access to this list. But S.’s discussion is lengthy and detailed, and as the end result is to push back the beginnings of regularisation of the intercalation cycle to the beginning of the Achaemenid period and to have it bedded down (more or less) in the reign of Darius I, this part of the book will be of significant value to those interested in the Babylonian calendar.

S. proposes that the regularisation of the intercalation from the beginning of the Achaemenid period was a ‘politically motivated attempt’ to ‘enable the observance of a single identical Babylonian official calendar throughout the vast expanses of the newly formed Achaemenid Empire’ (pp. 121–2). It remains intriguing, therefore, that in contrast Greek civil calendars persisted despite the imposition of ‘empire’ first under the Macedonians and then under the Romans. S.’s response to this apparent counter to his theory that standardisation follows empire is that political control of the civil calendar gave the local magistrates personal privilege, political prominence and ‘an effective instrument of social organization and social control’ (pp. 63–4). These look to me like the very reasons why the external authority of Macedon or Rome would want to wrest this power from the local authorities. As in other domains of investigation into the topic, one wonders to what degree Athens was ever really ‘Romanised’.

S.’s focus on political influences in calendar development probably is best read as a reaction to the notion that the imposition of a single, fixed calendar over a wide empire, such as the Julian calendar over the Roman empire, would have been driven by a desire to coordinate administrative, economic and legal business across the empire. It seems that the Romans simply did not use the calendar to those ends. Instead, S. argues, political agendas drove calendar development. But I think it is too modern to distinguish the religious aspect of calendar control and usage from the political. The Roman dictator Julius Caesar illustrates the issue well, although we might say the same for Athenian archons or Achaemenid kings: these political figures had religious identities and functions as well, and it remains debatable to my mind whether Caesar could have instituted his calendar reform, and hoped to have it hold, without the incorporation of his authority as pontifex maximus. Religion infiltrated every aspect of daily life in antiquity, politics included.