THE YEAR. 



periodic return of the seasons by more than eleven days, and 

 after the lapse of no more than three years the seasons were put 

 back more than a month ; and after a period of eighteen years 

 they were actually reversed, midsummer taking the place of mid- 

 winter, and vice versa. The return of the seasons constituted so 

 obvious and so natural a measure of the year, and was so inti- 

 mately connected with the prosecution of human affairs, and 

 especially with agriculture, that no measure of the year which 

 varied so much from it could be long maintained ; and, as we 

 have already stated, attempts were soon made in all the provinces 

 of Greece to bring the series of twelve months into accordance 

 with the period of the seasons, by adjusting their several lengths 

 so as to make a total of 365 days : an interval so near the true 

 succession of the seasons that an age must elapse before any 

 important discordance would have been rendered manifest. 



Religious questions, however, intervened and raised serious 

 difficulties among the Athenians. The festivals and ceremonies 

 connected with the worship of the gods all originated at an early 

 epoch when the lunar phenomena alone formed the basis of their 

 chronology. Certain observances were required to be made in certain 

 phases of the moon, and when those phases, by the changes in the 

 lengths of the months, no longer recurred upon the same days of 

 the year, but assumed a character similar to that of the moveable 

 feasts of the Christian church, it became necessary in order to fix 

 beforehand the times of their celebration, to calculate the days of 

 the lunar phases, and, in a word, to create a calendar. 



The difficulties which thus arose in the imperfect state of 

 astronomical science at that epoch were seriously aggravated by 

 a command proceeding from an oracle, to the effect that certain 

 festivals appointed to be celebrated under particular lunar phases 

 should be also held at certain seasons of the year. This at once 

 rendered necessary the solution of the problem to bring into 

 numerical accordance the series of lunations and the succession 

 of the seasons, a problem which was at the time as far removed 

 beyond the skill of the astronomers as that of the priests. 



79. At length, about 432 B.C., Meton, an ancient astronomer, 

 succeeded in obtaining a solution of it which, if not absolutely 

 complete, was regarded as so satisfactory as to excite an outburst 

 of popular enthusiasm. He stated that 235 lunations were 

 exactly or so nearly equal to nineteen years that at the end of 

 that period the full moons would again fall upon the same days of 

 the year, and that, consequently, if the series of full moons were 

 recorded for any single period of nineteen years, indicating the days 

 upon which they severally took place in each year, they must recur 

 upon the same days in every succeeding period of nineteen vears, 



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