The mean length of the year was thus reduced to 365¼ days; but it is not certain at what time the octennial periods, borrowed from the Greeks, were introduced into the Roman calendar, or whether they were at any time strictly followed.
Now an octennial cycle is the shortest period at the end of which sun and moon really mark time together after overlapping, so to say, throughout the whole of the interval.
The Olympic festival seems to have been based on the octennial cycle.
M59 Octennial festivals of the Crowning at Delphi and the Laurel-bearing at Thebes.
Octennial marriage of the king and queen as representatives of the sun and moon.
Thus the total number of lunar months comprised in two successive Olympiads was ninety-nine, which is precisely the number of lunar months in the octennial cycle.
M54 Octennial tribute of youths and maidens probably required as a means of renewing the sun's fire by human sacrifices.
The octennialcycle based on an attempt to reconcile solar and lunar time.
M62 Hypothesis of octennial kings at Delphi and Thebes, who personated dragons or serpents.
All these writers recognise the octennial cycle at Olympia.
Amongst them, two deserve to be noticed here, because it has been recently suggested, with some appearance of probability, that they were based on an octennial tenure of the kingship.
He was not awed into silence; he supported the Octennial Bill, the Free Trade Bill, and the Catholic Bill.
But theoctennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pæan with the harp.
Speaking of the octennial cycle Censorinus observes that "Ob hoc in Graecia multae religiones hoc intervallo temporis summa caerimonia coluntur" (De die natali, xviii.
The great age and the wide diffusion of the octennial cycle in Greece are rightly maintained by A.
The octennial cycle was instituted by the Greeks at a very early era for the purpose of harmonising solar and lunar time.
M61 The reasons for bisecting the old octennialperiod into two quadriennial periods may have been partly religious, partly political.
But these corrections were doubtless refinements of a later age; they may have been due to the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, or to Cleostratus of Tenedos, who were variously, but incorrectly, supposed to have instituted the octennial cycle.
Certainly it seems to have been based on an octennial cycle.
On this hypothesis the octennial Delphic Festival of Crowning and the octennial Theban Festival of Laurel-bearing were closely akin: in both the prominent part played by the laurel was purificatory or expiatory.
But this explanation appears to be inconsistent with the octennial period of the festival.
Octennial cycle based on an attempt to harmonize lunar and solar time, iv.
Cleostratus of Tenedos, said to have introduced the Greek octennial cycle, vii.
Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to send to Minos every eight years had some connexion with the renewal of the king's power for another octennial cycle.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "octennial" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
