Meton of Athens
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Meton of Athens was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and engineer who lived in Athens in the 5th century BCE. He is best known for the 19-year Metonic cycle which he introduced into the lunisolar Attic calendar as a method of calculating dates.
A year of 12 synodic or lunar months is 354 days on average, 11 days short of the 365.25 day solar year. The Athenians appear not to have had a regular means of intercalating a 13th month; instead, the question of when to add a month was decided by an official. Meton introduced a formula for intercalation. It was his observation that a period of 19 solar years (6,940 days) is almost exactly 235 lunar months, with an error of only 2 hours between 19 years and 235 months. 7 of the 19 years would have an intercalated month. This cycle can be used to predict eclipses, forms the basis of the Greek and Jewish calendars, and is used to determine the date for Easter each year. In Antiquity the Metonic cycle was sometimes called the Great year. Among astronomers, it was superseded in the following century when Callippus developed the Callippic cycle.
It is surprising that Homer knew about the cycle some centuries before Meton, and used it in the Odyssey. Homer makes Odysseus leave Ithaca, and then return and secretly meet Penelope at just the exact moment one cycle occurs Gilbert Murray. The Rise of the Greek Epic. Oxford, (1907) Joseph Campbell. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, vol III, (1964). J.F. del Giorgio. The Oldest Europeans. A.J. Place (2006).
Meton was one of the first Greek astronomers to make accurate astronomical observations. Working with Euctemon, he observed the summer solstice on June 27, 432 BCE.
About 430 BCE, he determined the length of the tropical year to be about 365 days, 6 hrs and 19 mins, which is 31 minutes longer than the modern value. It gives exactly 6,940 days to one 19-year cycle.
Meton appears briefly as a character in Aristophanes' play The Birds. He comes onstage carrying surveying instruments and is described as a geometer.
None of his works survive.
References
- Toomer, G. J. "Meton." Dictionary of Scientific Biography 9:337-40.
External links
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