C 184 ] 
there feems to have been much the fame foundation for 
one as the other. In the parapegmata or calendars, in- 
troduced in Greece, as we learn from theono";, by the 
aftronomer me ton, and renewed either annually or, as 
I rather conjecture, at the expiration of every 1 9-year 
period, the heliacal rihngs and fettings of different 
ffars were marked as bringing in different forts of v'ca- 
ther. The truth is, the earlieft aflronomers imagined, 
that the weather was governed by the Sun; and that 
its varieties were every where owing to the different 
degrees of the Sun’s heat in the different feafons. 
They had therefore taken great pains to collecfl, by 
a long feries of obfervations, the weather that ufually 
prevailed in this or that particular place during the Sun’s 
paffage through every degree of every hgn. Upon 
thefe obfervations, not upon any whimlical theory of 
celeftial influences, the predictions in the calendars 
were founded. It feemed reafonable to announce, as the 
weather of each part of the year, what had been found to 
be then moft frequent. And while the civil reckonings 
of time were fo different among the different Greek 
ftates, and fo rudely digefted in all, the heliacal rifmgs 
and fettings of the ftars were the only certain and 
obvious marks, the compilers of thofe popular di- 
rectories could hit upon, of the Sun’s return to the dift 
ferent parts of the zodiac Hence they propofed them 
if) Scholia in Aratum. 
(^) Geminus. EWocyoyyn <pa<vo'«£V!». c. 14. 
to 
