In the second month of spring, called by the Ionians Thargelion, Apollo was purified at the altar at Tempe, and probably on the seventh day of the month; for the great expiatory festival of both deities, Apollo and Artemis, was at Athens celebrated on the sixth and seventh days; and Delos was at the same time purified; this ceremony was immediately followed by a feast of thanksgiving in honour of the god of light. According to Delian tradition, Artemis and Apollo (ἑβδομαγέτης)(1362) were born on the sixth and seventh days of this month.(1363) On the same day however on which the Delphian boy broke the laurel and turned homewards, the purifying laurel-boughs (from which the festival of the Daphnephoria derived its name)(1364) were probably also carried round in Bœotia, and throughout the rest of Greece.(1365) Soon after this, the setting of the Pleiades took place (the day before the ides of May, according to the statement of Eudoxus);(1366) at which time Hesiod makes the harvest begin; then, as has been above remarked, on the testimony of Diodorus and ancient works of art,(1367) Apollo, having been presented with the first ears of corn, leaves the Hyperboreans, and appears in a milder and more noble character at Delphi. If it was wished that the setting of the Pleiades should occur at a regular interval from the preceding festival, this could have been effected only by cycles, by which the lunar and sidereal years were made to agree. Now it was not difficult to observe, that, after ninety-nine lunar months, the setting of the Pleiades coincided pretty exactly with the same phase of the moon. From this circumstance arose the period of _eight years_, called by the Greeks ἐνναετηρὶς, in conformity with which the great festivals of Apollo at Delphi, Crete, and Thebes were from the earliest times arranged.(1368)