apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

696 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
(as the inscription at Nysa indicates, p. 682), or if introduced during
the period,
it caused no change in the names of the months. The
month with which we are specially concerned, Hav^tKos, HavStKos, or
ZavSiKos, appears throughout'.
(4)
But it is part of the same theory that, when the solar months
displaced the lunar, they did not take new names, but were simply
numbered 'first month,' 'second month,' and so forth. This mode
of designation therefore is taken to indicate a solar calendar. Thus,
when Aristides {Op. i. p. 469) writes 'It was the fourteenth day of the
second month according to our usage here (•^v Terpds ht\ 8eKa tov
Sivripov jx-qvo'i, ws vofxiCofiev ol Tairrj),' he is assumed to be referring to
a solar calendar prevailing at Pergamon; whereas elsewhere (p. 446;
see above, p. 661), when he mentions the names of the months, he is
supposed to have in view a lunar calendar still retained in Smyrna.
So again in the Acts of Pionius, the narrator, speaking of the commemoration
of Polycarp, describes it as secundo ' die sexti mensis '
{Act. Smc. Alart. p. 188, Ruinart). But this hypothesis again
is not
borne out by the evidence. The probable view is that the numbering
of the months was adopted, not to distinguish the solar from the lunar
calendar (it
would be a very poor expedient for this purpose), but to
secure intelligibility,
where the names and order of the months differed
even in neighbouring towns, and intercommunication was thus perplexing.
This at all events is the opinion of Ussher (p. 359) and of
Ideler (i. p. 423) and many others and it alone seems to be consonant
;
with the facts'. See, for instance. Bull, de Corresp. Hellhi. v. p. 431 sq,
where months are numbered and named in the same inscription. At
some places the numbering superseded the nomenclature earlier and
more completely than elsewhere, as for instance at Eumenia and
Sebaste, neighbouring cities of Phrygia"* ;
1
= €TOi;S UVf] IX. TTpWTOV 8' A.D. 174
cTOus =
0-776'' JU.7JF0S [e]'
A.D. 205
€TOVS (TTtO', IXTj. La K = A. D. 205
It is the opinion of Prof. Ramsay C. I. G. III. p. 1103. Boeckh (in. p. 22)
that, wherever Zcw'St/cos is written, there supposes that another is
epoch intended,
was a thin stroke across the Z, unobserved In the third and last inscriptions Paris
by the transcriber, thus making it Sacot/cos. and Ok continuously, and
prints ta/c is at
" In C. I. G. 2693 e however, where a loss to explain the k. superfluous The
Boeckh has tt^^tttv, referring obviously analogy of the ist and 3rd inscriptions
to a lunar month, the correct reading is (given in Boeckh) suggests that this
ne/)trt(j; see Biill. de Corr. Hell. V. p. 1 1 : 7. letter denotes the day of the month, and
2
The dates are here treated as be- so I have treated it.
longing to the Sullan era ;
see Franz