The Greek tables had begun with the new moon which fell (on 29 August) the day before the starting date of their chronology, which was 30 August 284. The epact thus calculated was carried over unchanged by Dionysius into his tables together with a number from one to seven, calculated annually, called by the Greeks the "day of the gods" and in the west the "concurrent". This number the Greeks used for calculating the day of the week for any date in their calendar, simple arithmetic because all their months had thirty days. These two variables were understood neither by Dionysius nor by the other western computists, who were used to working with the age of the moon on 1 January and the Sunday letters to determine the Sundays. This is why the tables took so long to gain acceptance, but the values were eventually assimilated into the theory, the concurrent as the weekday of 24 March and the epact as the age of the moon on 22 March.