Navigating Time: Calendars and Politics in Ancient Cultures

Professor Alexander Meyer visits Google to share the ways ancient Greeks and Romans kept time and their reasons for doing so. He discusses various time-keeping artifacts and works of literature to show that the manner in which time was kept and tracked reflected and continues to reflect much broader cultural issues, including imperialism, commercialism, religion, and law.

This Talk analyzes ancient Greek and Roman calendrical systems, highlighting their diverse cultural expression and the challenges they faced in reconciling different calendars, with a focus on the calendar reforms made by Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus. For example, in 46 BCE Julius Caesar implemented calendar reforms to correct the discrepancies caused by the lunar calendar's inaccuracy, and Augustus further refined the calendar system to ensure that leap years occurred every four years, as intended.

Visit http://youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle/ to watch the video.