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)
5. These data afford a sufficient proof of a remarkable and by no means fortuitous connexion between the expiatory festivals of Apollo: we may discover the vestiges of a sacred calendar, once, without doubt, preserved entire, but which, through the various combinations introduced into the Grecian worship, became disjointed and broken. This was particularly the case in the Attic festivals, where the same festival is frequently, as it were, doubled, and placed in different portions of the year. A remarkable instance, illustrative of the above remark, immediately occurs to us. As the months Munychion and Thargelion succeeded each other in the _second_ half of the year, so did Boëdromion and Pyanepsion in the _first_. The sixth of Boëdromion was sacred to Artemis; the seventh, without doubt, to Apollo Boëdromius, _the martial god_; who therefore corresponds with the Delphinian Apollo, and the festival with the Delphinia. The Pyanepsia, however, were very similar to the Thargelia; the laurel-boughs wrapt with wool, carried round at the celebration of both, remind us of the Daphnephoria;(1369) only, as was above remarked, the worship of Bacchus, which Theseus is said to have established at Naxos, after his return from the islands, was mixed up with it, and is to be recognised in the carrying of boughs (ὀσχοφορία), which was introduced into this festival. Thus these four seventh days (ἑβδόμαι) correspond with each other as follows: