Prior to our modern BCE/CE, how did people during classical antiquity measure what year it was?

by saucygibbon

I recently wondered how the ancients (particularly the Greeks & Romans) measured what year it was. Our modern BCE/CE calendar system is based upon eras set by Christianity. The aforementioned civilisations existed well before Christianity gained widespread popularity, and thus well before our BCE/CE system was even constructed. The ancients lived in their perceived present day (as do we), so what event did they utilise to identify current/previous eras, and more so, to identify the year number (i.e '2014').

tl;dr How did classical antiquity measure what year it was, what calendar system did they use, and from what point did they measure from?

Fudus2

The Romans used Consular Years; the names of the two Consuls who were elected that year. http://www.ualberta.ca/~csmackay/Consuls.List.html

The Chinese used regnal years. The Emperor selected selected an era name, and each year was Year X of Era Name. Other East Asian countries used similar names. The current Japanese Era for instance is Hesei, and 2014 is Heisei 26.