When sixty days have circled, since the sun Turn’d from his wintry tropic, then the star Arcturus, leaving ocean’s sacred flood, First whole-apparent makes his evening rise. It is singular that so great a philosopher as Dr. Priestley should also have argued for the certainty of the same method of chronology in this instance of Hesiod. (Lectures on History, Lect. xii. p. 99.) But neither the accuracy nor the precise nature of the astronomical observation here commemorated can possibly be ascertained. It is uncertain whether the single star Arcturus may not be placed for the whole constellation of Boötes; of which there are examples in Columella, and other writers. It is wholly uncertain whether this rising was observed in Hesiod’s own country, or even in Hesiod’s own time; a knowledge of both which particulars is essential to our making a just calculation. We shall scarcely ascribe to Hesiod a more scientific accuracy than to subsequent astronomers; yet we find that even _their_ observations of the solstices and of the risings and settings of the stars, are ambiguous, and most probably fallacious. Hesiod makes the achronycal rising of Arcturus sixty days after the winter solstice: many other writers, and particularly Pliny, say the same. Now setting the difference between Hesiod and Pliny at 800 years, this will make a difference of eleven days in the time of the phænomenon. Both therefore cannot have written from actual observation, and probably neither did. The ancients copied from each other without scruple; because they knew not till the time of Hipparchus, that the times of rising &c. varied by the course of ages. They seem besides to have copied from writers of various latitudes: unconscious that this also made a difference. We shall not then be disposed to rely on this, or similar passages of Hesiod, for any secure data of chronology.