Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/50

 (Ceres), (Bacchus), and  (Hercules). India. Numerous Indian tribes keep Yuletide as a religious festival. Mexico holds in the winter solstice the festival of Capaerame. Persia at the same period honours the birth of Mithras. Rome celebrated on December 25th the festival 'Natalis Solis Invicta.' Scandinavia held at Yuletide the festival called Jul, in honour of Freya, son of Odin.

54. .—This word appears in our calendars, and indicates that there are an excess in days of the solar year over the lunar year, As the former has 365 days, and the latter only 354, this would make a maximum difference of eleven days. But the epact for any one year is the number of days from the last new moon of the preceding year to the first day of January immediately following.

55. .—This is 'a chronological period of 7,980 years, combining the solar, lunar, and indiction cycles (28 × 19 × 15 = 7,980), being reckoned from the year 4,713, B.C., when the first year of these several cycles would: coincide, so that if any year of the period be divided by 28, 19, or 15, the remainder would be the year of the compounding cycle. The Julian period was proposed by Scaliger, to remove or avoid ambiguities in chronological dates, and was so named because composed of Julian years.' It was handy for fixing years in a common basis between 4,713 B.C., and 1582 A.D., or later, according to the adoption of the Gregorian correction on the Julian