31 
Sun’s ar at sunrise at the Equinox; only once in four years 
is this at zero for the same place; in the intervening years 
it will vary from one to three minutes. I am fully conscious 
‘of these and other minute irregularities to which the pure 
mathematician might object, but greater attention to which 
would have obscured my statements without affecting the truth 
of my argument to the extent of one year in one thousand years. 
}REEK REFORMATION OF THE TEMPLE. 
Within 500 years, of the latest of the above mentioned dates, the 
Phoenician or Tyrian Empire had ceased to exist, and her numer- 
cous colonies had been absorbed by the nationalities surrounding 
each of them. The downfall of the empire commenced with domestic 
troubles when Ithobaal, priest of Astarte and father of Jezebel, 
Ahab’s wife, murdered in B.c. $98 the king Pheletus, the last of the 
male descendants of Hiram, Solomon’s friend and ally. At that 
time, besides their African colonies, Cyprus, Rhodes, Malta, 
Minorca, part of Sicily and of Sardinia, and all the Aigeean Islands, 
with Gadir and colonies in Spain were subject to their dominion. 
About B.c. 400, the Greeks supplanted the Pheenicians in their 
trade with Britain, and probably for some time continued to use 
the same mart and sea route the latter had used, we may assume 
from Cherbourg to Poole or Christchurch, whence they bore 
away the tin which the Britons had brought thither in their 
-coracles from Cornwall. Now commenced a new era for Stonehenge. 
It must have been a noted Temple, and I cannot doubt that 
Hecatzeus did allude to it, as cited by Strabo, when he wrote in the 
6th Century B.C. of the round Temple to Apollo in the land of the 
Hyperboreans. Now, the festivals of the Greeks were more 
connected with the months than with the year, and their calendar 
months were alternate, full and hollow, wherefore the 30 pillars 
were doubtless used by them for the daily sacrifice in the months 
of 30 days and the spaces between them, omitting the entrance, 
for the hollow months of 29 days. Owing to the precession of 
