and 49 minutes of the Equinoctial year; the beginning of this year will move backwards thirty and three days and five hours in 137 years:  and by consequence this year began at first in Egypt upon the Vernal Equinox, according to the Sun’s mean motion, 137 years before the AEra of Nabonassar began; that is, in the year of the Julian Period 3830, or 96 years after the death of Solomon:  and if it began upon the next day after the Vernal Equinox, it might begin four years earlier; and about that time ended the Reign of Amenophis:  for he came not from Susa to the Trojan war, but died afterwards in Egypt.  This year was received by the Persian Empire from the Babylonian; and the Greeks also used it in the AEra Philippaea, dated from the Death of Alexander the great; and Julius Caesar corrected it, by adding a day in every four years, and made it the year of the Romans.

Syncellus tells us, that the five days were added to the old year by the last King of the Shepherds:  and the difference in time between the Reign of this King, and that of Ammon, is but small; for the Reign of the Shepherds ended but one Generation, or two, before Ammon began to add those days.  But the Shepherds minded not Arts and Sciences.

The first month of the Luni-solar year, by reason of the Intercalary month, began sometimes a week or a fortnight before the Equinox or Solstice, and sometimes as much after it.  And this year gave occasion to the first Astronomers, who formed the Asterisms, to place the Equinoxes and Solstices in the middles of the Constellations of Aries, Cancer, Chelae, and Capricorn. Achilles Tatius [69] tells us, that some antiently placed the Solstice in the beginning of Cancer_, others in the eighth degree of Cancer, others about the twelfth degree, and others about the fifteenth degree thereof._ This variety of opinions proceeded from the precession of the Equinox, then not known to the Greeks.  When the Sphere was first formed, the Solstice was in the fifteenth degree or middle of the Constellation of Cancer:  then it came into the twelfth, eighth, fourth, and first degree successively. Eudoxus, who flourished about sixty years after Meton, and an hundred years before Aratus, in describing the Sphere of the Ancients, placed the Solstices and Equinoxes in the middles of the Constellations of Aries, Cancer, Chelae, and Capricorn, as is affirmed by [70] Hipparchus Bithynus; and appears also by the Description of the Equinoctial and Tropical Circles in Aratus, [71] who copied after Eudoxus; and by the positions of the Colures of the Equinoxes and Solstices, which in the Sphere of Eudoxus, described by Hipparchus, went through the middles of those Constellations.