4o8 



TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



that the usual chronology of the Egyptians, Romans, and 

 Greeks, antedates the concerned events, respectively, by one or 

 two years. 



2. The Solar and Lunar Calendars of the Greeks. — Many 

 ancient authors, e.g. Theodorus Gaza (Petavius's Uranol. c. 9), 

 Censorinus (De d. n. 18), witness that the Greeks used not only 

 lunar, but also both solar months and tropic years. The latter 

 concerned the civil life of the Greeks, but their festivals were 

 celebrated according to the former ; for instance, the Olympian 

 games. The latter, it is well known, were performed from the 

 nth to the 1 6th days of the lunar month preceding the summer 

 solstice (Thucyd. v. 49. 50; Scholiast to Pind. Ol. iii. 35). The 

 new moons commencing the lunar months of the Greeks and 

 Romans were the days on which the first crescent after sunset 

 became visible, viz. commonly 24, sometimes 48 hours after the 

 astronomical conjunction of the moon with the sun ; hence the 

 full moons were, like the days, 24 to 48 hours after the astro- 

 nomical full moons. Since, moreover, the lunar year contained 

 only 354 days, the Greeks and Romans had, every two or three 

 years, to add a thirteenth lunar month, a second Poseideon or 

 December, in order to keep the lunar year in harmony with the 

 seasons of the tropic year. The solar year of the Greeks was first 

 discovered by Halma (Chronologic de Ptolemee, p. 40) in an an- 

 cient manuscript ; and I do not understand how it came to pass 

 that Clinton, Fischer, and other modern chronologers, knew 

 •nothing about this very important calendar, as follows. We join 

 the names of the Macedonian months, because the latter com- 

 menced with the same days of the Julian year. (Demoth. D. C. 

 Or. G. i. 2S0.) 



