120 THE GREEK ASTRONOMY. 



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

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

 sun and rnoon. u 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. 



Oi/c ayctv rdj 



j, eiAA" av<D rt KOI Kara) icvoi6o~av 

 tyrjaiv a&nj rov$ 9eoi>s iKaarort 

 'Hi/iV av ij/evad&ffi dtirrvov Kaniuxriv oiKacc 

 Tr/f foprrjs prj Tv\6vrn Kara \6yov TWV ^fitpSv. 



Nubes, 615-19. 

 CHORUS OF CLOUDS. 



The Moon by us to you her greeting sends, 

 But 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. 19 



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 all 

 early cycles. 



Sect. 5. Invention of Lunisolar Years. 



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

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

 ing 12 J 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 20 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. 



2 B. i. c. 15. 



