the various operations of nature; but it was long before the space of time, wherein that luminary performs his course through the zodiac, and returns to the point from which he set out, was called a year.  The great year (annus magnus), or the PLATONIC YEAR, is the space of time, wherein the seven planets complete their revolutions, and all set out again from the same point of the heavens where their course began before.  Mathematicians have been much divided in their calculations.  Brotier observes, that Riccioli makes the great year 25,920 solar years; Tycho Brahe, 25,816; and Cassini, 24,800.  Cicero expressly calls it a period of 12,954 years. Horum annorum, quos in fastis habemus, MAGNUS annos duodecim millia nonagentos quinquaginta quatuor amplectitur solstitiales scilicet. For a full and accurate dissertation on the ANNUS MAGNUS, see the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres, tom. xxii. 4to edit. p. 82.

Brotier, in his note on this passage, relates a fact not universally known.  He mentions a letter from one of the Jesuits on the mission, dated Peking, 25th October 1725, in which it is stated, that in the month of March preceding, when Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury were in conjunction, the Chinese mathematicians fancied that an approximation of Saturn was near at hand, and, in that persuasion, congratulated the emperor YONG-TCHING on the renovation of the world, which was shortly to take place.  The emperor received the addresses of the nobility, and gave credit to the opinion of the philosophers in all his public edicts.  Meanwhile, Father Kegler endeavoured to undeceive the emperor, and to convince him that the whole was a mistake of the Chinese mathematicians:  but he tried in vain; flattery succeeded at court, and triumphed over truth.

[e] The argument is this:  If the great year is the measure of time; then, as it consists, according to Cicero, of 12,954 solar years, the whole being divided by twelve, every month of the great year would be clearly 1080 years.  According to that calculation, Demosthenes not only lived in the same year with the persons engaged in the Dialogue, but, it may be said, in the same month.  These are the months to which Virgil alludes in the fourth eclogue: 

     Incipient magni procedere menses.

Section XVII.

[a] Menenius Agrippa was consul A.U.C. 251.  In less than ten years afterwards, violent dissensions broke out between the patrician order and the common people, who complained that they were harassed and oppressed by their affluent creditors.  One Sicinius was their factious demagogue.  He told them, that it was in vain they fought the battles of their country, since they were no better than slaves and prisoners at Rome.  He added, that men are born equal; that the fruits of the earth were the common birth-right of all, and an agrarian law was necessary; that they groaned under a load of debts and taxes; and that