Note 402 — Chapter II · THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY, IN THE EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES.

In this early phase of the Pythian festival, it is said to have been celebrated every eight years, marking what we should call an Octaetêris, and what the early Greeks called an Ennaetêris (Censorinus, De Die Natali, c. 18). This period is one of considerable importance in reference to the principle of the Grecian calendar, for ninety-nine lunar months coincide very nearly with eight solar years. The discovery of this coincidence is ascribed by Censorinus to Kleostratus of Tenedos, whose age is not directly known: he must be anterior to Meton, who discovered the cycle of nineteen solar years, but (I imagine) not much anterior. In spite of the authority of Ideler, it seems to me not proved, nor can I believe, that this octennial period with its solar and lunar coincidence was known to the Greeks in the earliest times of their mythical antiquity, or before the year 600 B. C. See Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i. p. 366; vol. ii. p. 607. The practice of the Eleians to celebrate the Olympic games alternately after forty-nine and fifty lunar months, though attested for a later time by the Scholiast on Pindar, is not proved to be old. The fact that there were ancient octennial recurring festivals, does not establish a knowledge of the properties of the octaeteric or ennaeteric period: nor does it seem to me that the details of the Bœotian δαφνηφορíα, described in Proclus ap. Photium, sect. 239, are very ancient. See, on the old mythical Octaetêris, O. Müller, Orchomenos 218, seqq., and Krause, Die Pythien, Nemeen, und Isthmien, sect. 4, p. 22.