5 8 C H R O N O L O G Y.

Chapteh. ed the ten laft days of the month backward from the thirtieth,FlRST ' calling that day ivw H veoty, the old and the new, or the laftday of the old month and the firft day of the new: for he in-troduced months of 29 and 30 days alternately, making thethirtieth day of every other month to be the firft day of thenext month ( 2 ).

1 Cenforinus XXIII. To the twelve lunar months a the ancient Greeks add-

c. 18. Hercd.

1. c. 4. ed a thirteenth, every other year, which made their Dieteris ;

and becaufe this reckoning made their year too long by a monthin eight years, they omitted an intercalary month once in eightyears, which made their OBaeteris , one half of which was their'Tetraeteris: and thefe periods feem to have been almoft as old asthe religions of Greece, being ufed in divers of their Sacra .i 3 P c 0l 4°§ 0 ii The b OBaeteris was the annus magnus of Cadmus and Minos (*),p- -6y. Zud feems to have been brought into Greece and Crete by the

(Strabo, 1 , 10, 0

p. 476. Phoenicians, who came thither with Cadmus and Europa, andodylnT. to have continued till after the days of Herodotus: for in count-■iffid.i.i.ing the length of feventy years, c he reckons thirty days to ac - 3 °' lunar month, and twelve fuch months, or 360 days, to the or-dinary year, without the intercalary months, and 2 5 fuch monthsto the Dieteris ( 2 ): and according to the number of days in thecalendar year of the Greeks, Demetrius Phalereus had 360 fta-tues erecfted to him by the Athenians. But the Greeks, Cleof-tratus, Harpalus, and others, to make their months agree betterwith the courfe of the moon, in the times of the Perfian em-pire, varied the manner of intercalating the three months in the

OBaeteris ;

ginning of Hefiod’s huipu : and by the particular mention which is made of the true triacas inthe 4th line, it appears, that there was in Hefiod’s time a true and a falfe triacas ; i. e. a naturaland a civil one: or that the word was ufed both to denote the laft day of the artificial month,, which was really the thirtieth, and the day of the true conjunftion, although that fltould not be

the laft of the month. See Proclus on the place. This name, therefore, was given to the laftday of the month before Thales.

( 2 ) See Plutarch in Solon. tom.I. p 92. Diog. Laert. lib. 1. § LVI 1 I & LX. Ariftoph. Nub.!in. 1129 & 1180—1196, with the Scholia.

§ XXIII.

(') Belides the places to which our author refers, fee Plato in Minos, p. 568.

(*) Thepalfageof Herodotus feems rather to be an argument, that the Dieteris was in ufe inhis time. “ I kx the term of human life, fays Solon, at •jo years. Thefe 70 years, taking no

" account