discovered that this cycle no longer answered, that the festival
which had originally fallen on the first of May now occurred on
the first of April. This, we are told,
"led ultimately to the discovery that the equinox preceded about
2160 years in each sign or 25,920 years in the 12 signs, and this
induced them to try if they could not form a cycle of the two.
On examination, they found that the 600 would not commensurate
the 2160 years in a sign, or any number of sums of 2160 less than
ten, but that it would with ten, or that in ten times 2160, or in
21,600 years, the two cycles would agree; yet this artificial
cycle would not be enough to include the cycle of 25,920. They,
therefore, took two of the periods of 21,600, or 43,200; and,
multiplying both by ten--viz: 600 X 10 = 6000, and 43,200 X 10 =
432,000--they formed a period with which the 600-year period and
the 6000-year period would terminate and form a cycle. Every
432,000 years the three periods would commence anew; thus the
three formed a year or cycle, 72 times 6000 making 432,000, and
720 times 600 making 432,000."[63]
[63] Higgins, Anacalypsis, p. 235.
To form a great year, which would include all the cyclical
motions of the sun and moon, and perhaps of the planets, they
multiplied 432,000 by ten; thus they had ten periods answering to
ten signs. Concerning these cycles Godfrey Higgins observes:
"Persons of narrow minds will be astonished at such monstrous
cycles; but it is very certain that no period could properly be
called the great year unless it embraced in its cycle every
periodical movement or apparent aberration. But their vulgar
wonder will perhaps cease when they are told that La Place has
proved that, if the periodical aberrations of the moon be
correctly calculated, the great year must be extended to a
greater length even than 4,320,000 years of the Maha Yug of the
Hindoos, and certainly no period can be called a year of our
planetary system which does not take in all the periodical
motions of the planetary bodies."
It is thought that as soon as these ancient astronomers perceived
that the equinoxes preceded, they would at once attempt to
determine the rate of precession in a given time; the precession,
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