A Short History of Astronomy - Arthur Berry (read along books .txt) 📗

20. A little later, the astronomer Meton (born about 460 B.C.) made the discovery that the length of 19 years is very nearly equal to that of 235 lunar months (the difference being in fact less than a day), and he devised accordingly an arrangement of 12 years of 12 months and 7 of 13 months, 125 of the months in the whole cycle being “full” and the others “empty.” Nearly a century later Callippus made a slight improvement, by substituting in every fourth period of 19 years a “full” month for one of the “empty” ones. Whether Meton’s cycle, as it is called, was introduced for the civil calendar or not is uncertain, but if not it was used as a standard by reference to which the actual calendar was from time to time adjusted. The use of this cycle seems to have soon spread to other parts of Greece, and it is the basis of the present ecclesiastical rule for fixing Easter. The difficulty of ensuring satisfactory correspondence between the civil calendar and the actual motions of the sun and moon led to the practice of publishing from time to time tables (παραπήγματα) not unlike our modern almanacks, giving for a series of years the dates of the phases of the moon, and the rising and setting of some of the fixed stars, together with predictions of the weather. Owing to the same cause the early writers on agriculture (e.g. Hesiod) fixed the dates for agricultural operations, not by the calendar, but by the times of the rising and setting of constellations, i.e. the times when they first became visible before sunrise or were last visible immediately after sunset—a practice which was continued long after the establishment of a fairly satisfactory calendar, and was apparently by no means extinct in the time of Galen (2nd century A.D.).

21. The Roman calendar was in early times even more confused than the Greek. There appears to have been at one time a year of either 304 or 354 days; tradition assigned to Numa the introduction of a cycle of four years, which brought the calendar into fair agreement with the sun, but made the average length of the month considerably too short. Instead, however, of introducing further refinements the Romans cut the knot by entrusting to the ecclesiastical authorities the adjustment of the calendar from time to time, so as to make it agree with the sun and moon. According to one account, the first day of each month was proclaimed by a crier. Owing either to ignorance, or, as was alleged, to political and commercial favouritism, the priests allowed the calendar to fall into a state of great confusion, so that, as Voltaire remarked, “les généraux romains triomphaient toujours, mais ils ne savaient pas quel jour ils triomphaient.”

A satisfactory reform of the calendar was finally effected by Julius Caesar during the short period of his supremacy at Rome, under the advice of an Alexandrine astronomer Sosigenes. The error in the calendar had mounted up to such an extent, that it was found necessary, in order to correct it, to interpolate three additional months in a single year (46 B.C.), bringing the total number of days in that year up to 445. For the future the year was to be independent of the moon; the ordinary year was to consist of 365 days, an extra day being added to February every fourth year (our leap-year), so that the average length of the year would be 365-1∕4 days.

The new system began with the year 45 B.C., and soon spread, under the name of the Julian Calendar, over the civilised world.

22. To avoid returning to the subject, it may be convenient to deal here with the only later reform of any importance.

The difference between the average length of the year as fixed by Julius Caesar and the true year is so small as only to amount to about one day in 128 years. By the latter half of the 16th century the date of the vernal equinox was therefore about ten days earlier than it was at the time of the Council of Nice (A.D. 325), at which rules for the observance of Easter had been fixed. Pope Gregory XIII. introduced therefore, in 1582, a slight change;, ten days were omitted from that year, and it was arranged to omit for the future three leap-years in four centuries (viz. in 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, etc., the years 1600, 2000, 2400, etc., remaining leap-years). The Gregorian Calendar, or New Style, as it was commonly called, was not adopted in England till 1752, when 11 days had to be omitted; and has not yet been adopted in Russia and Greece, the dates there being now 12 days behind those of Western Europe.

23. While their oriental predecessors had confined themselves chiefly to astronomical observations, the earlier Greek philosophers appear to have made next to no observations of importance, and to have been far more interested in inquiring into causes of phenomena. Thales, the founder of the Ionian school, was credited by later writers with the introduction of Egyptian astronomy into Greece, at about the end of the 7th century B.C.; but both Thales and the majority of his immediate successors appear to have added little or nothing to astronomy, except some rather vague speculations as to the form of the earth and its relation to the rest of the world. On the other hand, some real progress seems to have been made by Pythagoras11 and his followers. Pythagoras taught that the earth, in common with the heavenly bodies, is a sphere, and that it rests without requiring support in the middle of the universe. Whether he had any real evidence in support of these views is doubtful, but it is at any rate a reasonable conjecture that he knew the moon to be bright because the sun shines on it, and the phases