275 Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, 54, where the quadriennial (penteteric) festival of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned along with the quadriennial festivals of the Panathenaica, the Delia, the Brauronia, and the Heraclea. The biennial (trieteric) festival of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned only in the inscription of 329 B.C. (Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_,2 No. 587, lines 259 _sq._). As to the identity of the Great Eleusinian Games with the quadriennial games see Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_, No. 246 note 9, No. 587 note 171. 276 As to the Plataean games see Plutarch, _Aristides_, 21; Pausanias, ix. 2. 6. 277 Strabo, vii. 7. 6, p. 325; Suetonius, _Augustus_, 18; Dio Cassius, li. 1; Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines_, _s.v._ “Actia.” 278 Pausanias, viii. 9. 8. 279 Scholiast on Pindar, _Pyth._, Argument, p. 298, ed. Aug. Boeckh; Censorinus, _De die natali_, xviii. 6. According to the scholiast on Pindar (_l.c._) the change from the octennial to the quadriennial period was occasioned by the nymphs of Parnassus bringing ripe fruits in their hands to Apollo, after he had slain the dragon at Delphi. 280 Scholiast on Pindar, _Olymp._ iii. 35 (20), p. 98, ed. Aug. Boeckh. Compare Boeckh’s commentary on Pindar (vol. iii. p. 138 of his edition); L. Ideler, _Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie_, i. 366 _sq._, ii. 605 _sqq._ 281 See _The Dying God_, chapter ii. § 4, “Octennial Tenure of the Kingship,” especially pp. 68 _sq._, 80, 89 _sq._ 282 Geminus, _Elementa Astronomiae_, viii. 25 _sqq._, pp. 110 _sqq._, ed. C. Manitius (Leipsic, 1898); Censorinus, _De die natali_, xviii. 2-6. 283 Geminus, _l.c._ 284 Geminus, _Elementa Astronomiae_, viii. 36-41. 285 Censorinus, _De die natali_, xviii. 5. As Eudoxus flourished in the fourth century B.C., some sixty or seventy years after Meton, who introduced the nineteen years’ cycle to remedy the defects of the octennial cycle, the claim of Eudoxus to have instituted the latter cycle may at once be put out of court. The claim of Cleostratus, who seems to have lived in the sixth or fifth century B.C., cannot be dismissed so summarily; but for the reasons given in the text he can hardly have done more than suggest corrections or improvements of the ancient octennial cycle. 286 Geminus, _Elementa Astronomiae_, viii. 27. With far less probability Censorinus (_De die natali_, xviii. 2-4) supposes that the octennial cycle was produced by the successive duplication of biennial and quadriennial cycles. See below, pp. 86 _sq._ 287 L. Ideler, _Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie_, ii. 605.