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thus generally adopted, the lunar cycles, devised by the Greeks, 
for measuring the course of time, were constructed. Confor- 
mably to the principle, it is shown, that from the shortest of 
8 years devised by Solon, to the longest of 304 years devised 
by Hipparchus, they consisted of a succession of complete 
quadrienniums, and ended in an intercalation. The exception 
of Meton’s cycle of 19 years is considered; and evidence is 
produced that even in it the quadriennium was not disregarded. 
To the Romans the use of the quadriennium is traced 
after the Greeks, and exemplified in the lustrum ; the antiquity 
of which is inferred from its institution by Servius Tullius, 
about 580 years before the Christian era. Having shown, from 
the testimony of Ovid, that the cycle was a quadriennium 
properly intercalated, the author passes to the reformation of 
the Roman calendar by Cesar, and shows that his principle, 
which remains in use among ourselves, was adopted from the 
times of Cn. Flavius, by whom it had been divulged about 304 
years before our era. 
2. The author, after inferring from the preceding obser- 
yations the establishment of the first point of inquiry, pro- 
ceeds to the second, in which he undertakes to show that 
the quadrienniums thus used by those ancient nations pre- 
served the order which they hold in the Julian Period. In 
commencing with the Egyptians, he first considers the consti- 
; 
J 
tution of the great canicular cycle as composed of a succes- 
sion of the smaller cycles, and as previously shown by him to 
be proper quadrienniums. From the construction of the fixed 
year, by which the vague year of the Egyptians was superseded 
_ at Alexandria, B.C. 25, it is first shown that its quadrienniums 
exactly coincide in order with those of the Julian Period. 
The same result is deduced from a rule given by a scholiast 
_ on Theon, for determining the epoch of the great canicular 
_ eycle. While itis founded on a computation of the quadrien- 
_ niums which composed that cycle, it ends in tracing its first 
a year to that of the corresponding quadriennium in the Julian 
pe ee 
