years. The statement has, however, been contested on good authority; and it seems proved (see Delambre, Astronomie Moderne, tom. i. p.81) that the Persian intercalation combines the two periods 729 and 833. If they follow the combination 7 + 3 × 829 + 3 × 33 = 31128 their determination of the length of the tropical year has been extremely exact. The discovery of the period of thirty-three years is ascribed to Omar Khayyam, one of the eight astronomers appointed by Jelāl ud-Din Malik Shah, sultan of Khorasan, to reform or construct a calendar, about the year 1079 of our era.
If the commencement of the year, instead of being retained at the same place in the seasons by a uniform method of intercalation, were made to depend on astronomical phenomena, the intercalations would succeed each other in an irregular manner, sometimes after four years and sometimes after five; and it would occasionally, though rarely indeed, happen, that it would be impossible to determine the day on which the year ought to begin. In the calendar, for example, which was attempted to be introduced in France in 1793, the beginning of the year was fixed at midnight preceding the day in which the true autumnal equinox falls. But supposing the instant of the sun’s entering into the sign Libra to be very near midnight, the small errors of the solar tables might render it doubtful to which day the equinox really belonged; and it would be in vain to have recourse to observation to obviate the difficulty. It is therefore infinitely more commodious to determine the commencement of the year by a fixed rule of intercalation; and of the various methods which might be employed, no one perhaps is on the whole more easy of application, or better adapted for the purpose of computation, than the Gregorian now in use. But a system of 31 intercalations in 128 years would be by far the most perfect as regards mathematical accuracy. Its adoption upon our present Gregorian calendar would only require the suppression of the usual bissextile once in every 128 years, and there would be no necessity for any further correction, as the error is so insignificant that it would not amount to a day in 100,000 years.
Of the Lunar Year and Luni-solar Periods.—The lunar year, consisting of twelve lunar months, contains only 354 days; its commencement consequently anticipates that of the solar year by eleven days, and passes through the whole circle of the seasons in about thirty-four lunar years. It is therefore so obviously ill-adapted to the computation of time, that, excepting the modern Jews and Mahommedans, almost all nations who have regulated their months by the moon have employed some method of intercalation by means of which the beginning of the year is retained at nearly the same fixed place in the seasons.
In the early ages of Greece the year was regulated entirely by the moon. Solon divided the year into twelve months, consisting alternately of twenty-nine and thirty days, the former of which were called deficient months, and the latter full months. The lunar year, therefore, contained 354 days, falling short of the exact time of twelve lunations by about 8.8 hours. The first expedient adopted to reconcile the lunar and solar years seems to have been the addition of a month of thirty days to every second year. Two lunar years would thus contain 25 months, or 738 days, while two solar years, of 36514 days each, contain 73012 days. The difference of 712 days was still too great to escape observation; it was accordingly proposed by Cleostratus of Tenedos, who flourished shortly after the time of Thales, to omit the biennary intercalation every eighth year. In fact, the 712 days by which two lunar years exceeded two solar years, amounted to thirty days, or a full month, in eight years. By inserting, therefore, three additional months instead of four in every period of eight years, the coincidence between the solar and lunar year would have been exactly restored if the latter had contained only 354 days, inasmuch as the period contains 354 × 8 + 3 × 30 = 2922 days, corresponding with eight solar years of 36514 days each. But the true time of 99 lunations is 2923.528 days, which exceeds the above period by 1.528 days, or thirty-six hours and a few minutes. At the end of two periods, or sixteen years, the excess is three days, and at the end of 160 years, thirty days. It was therefore proposed to employ a period of 160 years, in which one of the intercalary months should be omitted; but as this period was too long to be of any practical use, it was never generally adopted. The common practice was to make occasional corrections as they became necessary, in order to preserve the relation between the octennial period and the state of the heavens; but these corrections being left to the care of incompetent persons, the calendar soon fell into great disorder, and no certain rule was followed till a new division of the year was proposed by Meton and Euctemon, which was immediately adopted in all the states and dependencies of Greece.
The mean motion of the moon in longitude, from the mean equinox, during a Julian year of 365.25 days (according to Hansen’s Tables de la Lune, London, 1857, pages 15, 16) is, at the present date, 13 × 360° + 477644″.409; that of the sun being 360° + 27″.685. Thus the corresponding relative mean geocentric motion of the moon from the sun is 12 × 360° + 477616″.724; and the duration of the mean synodic revolution of the moon, or lunar month, is therefore 360°12 × 360° + 477616″.724 × 365.25 = 29.530588 days, or 29 days, 12 hours, 44 min. 2.8 sec.
The Metonic Cycle, which may be regarded as the chef-d’œuvre of ancient astronomy, is a period of nineteen solar years, after which the new moons again happen on the same days of the year. In nineteen solar years there are 235 lunations, a number which, on being divided by nineteen, gives twelve lunations for each year, with seven of a remainder, to be distributed among the years of the period. The period of Meton, therefore, consisted of twelve years containing twelve months each, and seven years containing thirteen months each; and these last formed the third, fifth, eighth, eleventh, thirteenth, sixteenth, and nineteenth years of the cycle. As it had now been discovered that the exact length of the lunation is a little more than twenty-nine and a half days, it became necessary to abandon the alternate succession of full and deficient months; and, in order to preserve a more accurate correspondence between the civil month and the lunation, Meton divided the cycle into 125 full months of thirty days, and 110 deficient months of twenty-nine days each. The number of days in the period was therefore 6940. In order to distribute the deficient months through the period in the most equable manner, the whole period may be regarded as consisting of 235 full months of thirty days, or of 7050 days, from which 110 days are to be deducted. This gives one day to be suppressed in sixty-four; so that if we suppose the months to contain each thirty days, and then omit every sixty-fourth day in reckoning from the beginning of the period, those months in which the omission takes place will, of course, be the deficient months.
The number of days in the period being known, it is easy to ascertain its accuracy both in respect of the solar and lunar motions. The exact length of nineteen solar years is 19 × 365.2422 = 6939.6018 days, or 6939 days 14 hours 26.592 minutes; hence the period, which is exactly 6940 days, exceeds nineteen revolutions of the sun by nine and a half hours nearly. On the other hand, the exact time of a synodic revolution of the moon is 29.530588 days; 235 lunations, therefore, contain 235 × 29.530588 = 6939.68818 days, or 6939 days 16 hours 31 minutes, so that the period exceeds 235 lunations by only seven and a half hours.
After the Metonic cycle had been in use about a century, a correction was proposed by Calippus. At the end of four cycles, or seventy-six years, the accumulation of the seven and a half hours of difference between the cycle and 235 lunations amounts to thirty hours, or one whole day and six hours. Calippus, therefore, proposed to quadruple the period of Meton, and deduct one day at the end of that time by changing one of the full months into a deficient month. The period of Calippus, therefore, consisted of three Metonic cycles of 6940 days each, and a period of 6939 days; and its error in respect of the moon, consequently, amounted only to six hours, or to one day in 304 years. This period exceeds seventy-six true solar years by fourteen hours and a quarter nearly, but coincides exactly with seventy-six Julian years; and in the time of Calippus the length of the solar year was almost universally supposed to be exactly 36514 days. The Calippic period is frequently referred to as a date by Ptolemy.
Ecclesiastical Calendar.—The ecclesiastical calendar, which is adopted in all the Catholic, and most of the Protestant countries of Europe, is luni-solar, being regulated partly by the solar, and partly by the lunar year,—a circumstance which gives rise to the
