822 
MB. F. C. PENBOSE ON THE RESULTS OF AB EXAMINATION 
phenomena. In the ‘ Agamemnon ’ of vEschylus the fall of Troy is said to have taken 
place at the setting of the Pleiades. Two unhealthy periods of the year are intended 
by Horace in the passage, ‘ Och’ iii., 1, 
“ Nec .sjBvus Arcturi cadentis 
Impetus aut orientis Hsedi.” 
Tliat the first beam of sunrise should fall upon the statue centrally placed in the 
adytum of a temple, or on the incense altar in front of it, on a particular day, it 
would be requisite that the orientation of the temple should coincide with the 
amplitude of the Sun when it rose above the visible horizon, be it mountain or plain. 
That a star should act as time warner, it was necessary that it should have so 
nearly the same amplitude as the Sun that it could be seen from the adytum through 
the eastern door, if it was to give warning at its rising, or to have a similar but 
reversed amplitude towards the west if its heliacal setting was to be observed, and it 
follows that in the choice of the festival day and the corresponding orientation of the 
temple on these principles, both the amplitude of the Sun at its rising, and that of 
the star eastwards or westwards, as the case might be, would have to be considered in 
connection with one another. 
From what has been said it is obvious that in the intra-solstitial temples the list of 
available bright stars and constellations is, in the first place, limited to those which 
lie within a few degrees of the ecliptic, and it will be found that in the list above 
given, and those which follow (if we omit Eleusis, where the conditions were excep¬ 
tional), all but one of the stars are found in the zodiacal constellations. A very great 
limitation is imposed, in the second place, by one of the conditions being the heliacal 
rising or setting of those stars from which the selection has to be made, so that when 
both these combined limitations are taken into account it becomes improbable to the 
greatest degree that in every instance of intra-solstitial temples of early foundation of 
which I have accurate jDarticulars—being twenty-eight in number, and varying in 
their orientation from 21° north to 18° south of the true east—there should be found 
a bright heliacal star or constellation in the right position, at dates not in themselves 
improbable, unless the temples had been so oriented as to secure this combination. 
Besides these there are on the list of those I have examined seven temples, 
evidently of comparatively late foundation, of whicli two only admit of stellar time 
warning. The others, of which the sites were in the great cities of Athens and 
Ephesus, were probably at the time of their foundation within a region of artificial 
time measures. The use of the stars, too, may at last have become discredited on 
account of the discovery of the continuity of the precessional movement. 
We see, then, that there is strong groimd for considering the orientation of a temple 
with reference both to the Sun and to some time-warning star, and, especially as it 
will be shown, that in later temples, respecting which alone we have any information 
available, the solar coincidences correspond in several cases noth what is known 
historically of the dates of the principal festivals. 
