120 THE GREEK ASTRONOMY. 



festivals and sacrifices, as determined by the calendar, were conceived 

 to be necessarily connected with the same periods of the cycles of the 

 sun and moon. " The laws and the oracles," says Geminus, " which 

 directed that they should in sacrifices observe three things, months, 

 days, years, were so understood." With this persuasion, a correct sys- 

 tem of intercalation became a religious duty. 



The above rule of alternate months of 29 and 30 days, supposes the 

 length of the months 29 days and a half, which is not exactly the 

 length of a lunar month. Accordingly the Months and the Moon were 

 soon at variance. Aristophanes, in "The Clouds," makes the Moon 

 complain of the disorder when the calendar was deranged. 



aysiv TUS 



OvSiv 6p6;, dAA' avta re Kal Karia 

 "IZor' dirtiXcti; tyrialv avrtj TOV; dcui'S 

 'HvjV av ij/evaO&ai Seiiri'ov Ka-iwcLv 

 Tij; /oprjjj pfj Tvxdvrct Kara \6yov TUJV j 



J\"ubes, 615-19. 

 CHORUS OF CLOUDS. 



The Moon by us to you her greeting sends, 

 Bat bids us say that she's an ill-used moon, 

 And takes it much amiss that you should still 

 Shuffle her days, and turn them topsy-turvy 

 And that the gods (who know their feast-days well) 

 By your false count are sent home supperless, 

 And scold and storm at her for your neglect. 13 



The correction of this inaccuracy, however, was not pursued sepa- 

 rately, but was combined with another object, the securing a corre- 

 spondence between the lunar and solar years, the main purpose of al! 

 early cycles. 



Sect. 5. Invention of Lunisolar Years. 



THERE are 12 complete lunations in a year; which according to 

 the above rule (of 29-| days to a lunation) would make 354 days, leav- 

 ing 12i days of difference between such a lunar year and a solar year. 

 It is said that, at an early period, this was attempted to be corrected 

 by interpolating a month of 30 days every alternate year ; and Herod- 

 otus 50 relates a conversation of Solon, implying a still ruder mode of 



19 This passage is supposed by the commentators to be intended as a satire upon 

 those who had introduced the cycle of Meton (spoken of in Sect. 5), which had 

 been done at Athens a few years before " The Clouds" was acted. 



20 B. i. c. 15. 



