8. Let us return to the words which follow. “Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.”  22  Gen. i. 14. We have spoken about signs. By times, we understand the succession of seasons, winter, spring, summer and autumn, which we see follow each other in so regular a course, thanks to the regularity of the movement of the luminaries. It is winter when the sun sojourns in the south and produces in abundance the shades of night in our region. The air spread over the earth is chilly, and the damp exhalations, which gather over our heads, give rise to rains, to frosts, to innumerable flakes of snow. When, returning from the southern regions, the sun is in the middle of the heavens and divides day and night into equal parts, the more it sojourns above the earth the more it brings back a mild temperature to us. Then comes spring, which makes all the plants germinate, and gives to the greater part of the trees their new life, and, by successive generation, perpetuates all the land and water animals. From thence the sun, returning to the summer solstice, in the direction of the North, gives us the longest days. And, as it travels farther in the air, it burns that which is over our heads, dries up the earth, ripens the grains and hastens the maturity of the fruits of the trees. At the epoch of its greatest heat, the shadows which the sun makes at mid-day are short, because it shines from above, from the air over our heads. Thus the longest days are those when the shadows are shortest, in the same way that the shortest days are those when the shadows are longest. It is this which happens to all of us “Hetero-skii”  23  i.e. throwing a shadow only one way at noon,—said of those who live north and south of the tropics, while those who live in the tropics cast a shadow sometimes north, sometimes south, vide Strabo ii. 5. § 43. It was “incredible” to Herodotus that Necho’s Phœnician mariners, in their circumnavigation of Africa, had “the sun on their right hand.” Her. iv. 42. (shadowed-on-one-side) who inhabit the northern regions of the earth. But there are people who, two days in the year, are completely without shade at mid-day, because the sun, being perpendicularly over their heads, lights them so equally from all sides, that it could through a narrow opening shine at the bottom of a well. Thus there are some who call them “askii” (shadowless). For those who live beyond the land of spices  24  i.e. Arabia. cf. Lucan., Phars. iii. 247: Ignotum vobis Arabes venistis in orbem, Umbras mirati nemorum non ire sinistras. see their shadow now on one side, now on another, the only inhabitants of this land of which the shade falls at mid-day; thus they are given the name of “amphiskii,”  25  “Simili modo tradunt in Syene oppido, quod est super Alexandriam quinque millibus stadiorum, solstitii die medio nullam umbram jaci; puteumque ejus experimenti gratia factum, totum illuminari.” Pliny ii. 75. cf. Lucan., Phars. 507, “atque umbras nunquam flectente Syene.” (shadowed-on-both-sides ). All these phenomena happen whilst the sun is passing into northern regions: they give us an idea of the heat thrown on the air, by the rays of the sun and of the effects that they produce. Next we pass to autumn, which breaks up the excessive heat, lessening the warmth little by little, and by a moderate temperature brings us back without suffering to winter, to the time when the sun returns from the northern regions to the southern. It is thus that seasons, following the course of the sun, succeed each other to rule our life.

“Let them be for days”  26  Gen. i. 14. says Scripture, not to produce them but to rule them; because day and night are older than the creation of the luminaries and it is this that the psalm declares to us. “The sun to rule by day…the moon and stars to rule by night.”  27  Ps. cxxxvi. 8, 9. How does the sun rule by day? Because carrying everywhere light with it, it is no sooner risen above the horizon than it drives away darkness and brings us day. Thus we might, without self deception, define day as air lighted by the sun, or as the space of time that the sun passes in our hemisphere. The functions of the sun and moon serve further to mark years. The moon, after having twelve times run her course, forms a year which sometimes needs an intercalary month to make it exactly agree with the seasons. Such was formerly the year of the Hebrews and of the early Greeks.  28  The Syrians and Macedonians had also an intercalary thirteenth month to accommodate the lunar to the solar cycle. Solon is credited with the introduction of the system into Greece about 594 b.c. But the Julian calendar improved upon this mode of adjustment. As to the solar year, it is the time that the sun, having started from a certain sign, takes to return to it in its normal progress.

Πρὸς δὲ τὰ ἑξῆς τῶν ῥημάτων ἐπανέλθωμεν. Ἔστωσαν, φησὶν, εἰς σημεῖα, καὶ εἰς καιροὺς, καὶ εἰς ἡμέρας, καὶ εἰς ἐνιαυτούς. Εἴρηται ἡμῖν τὰ περὶ τῶν σημείων. Καιροὺς δὲ ἡγούμεθα λέγειν τὰς τῶν ὡρῶν ἐναλλαγάς: χειμῶνος, καὶ ἔαρος, καὶ θέρους, καὶ μετοπώρου: ἃς εὐτάκτως περιοδεύειν ἡμᾶς τὸ τεταγμένον τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φωστήρων παρέχει. Χειμὼν μὲν γὰρ γίνεται, τοῖς νοτίοις μέρεσι τοῦ ἡλίου προσδιατρίβοντος, καὶ πολὺ τὸ νυκτερινὸν σκίασμα περὶ τὸν καθ' ἡμᾶς τόπον ἀποτελοῦντος: ὥστε καταψύχεσθαι μὲν τὸν περὶ γῆν ἀέρα, πάσας δὲ τὰς ὑγρὰς ἀναθυμιάσεις συνισταμένας περὶ ἡμᾶς, ὄμβρων τε αἰτίαν καὶ κρυμῶν καὶ νιφάδος ἀμυθήτου παρέχειν. Ἐπειδὰν δὲ ἐπανιὼν πάλιν ἀπὸ τῶν μεσημβρινῶν χωρίων ἐπὶ τοῦ μέσου γένηται, ὥστε ἐξίσου μερίζειν νυκτὶ πρὸς ἡμέραν τὸν χρόνον, ὅσῳ πλεῖον τοῖς ὑπὲρ γῆς προσδιατρίβει τόποις, τοσούτῳ κατὰ μέρος ἐπανάγει τὴν εὐκρασίαν. Καὶ γίνεται ἔαρ, πᾶσι μὲν φυτοῖς τῆς βλαστήσεως ἀρχηγὸν, δένδρων δὲ τοῖς πλείστοις παρέχον τὴν ἀναβίωσιν, ζῴοις δὲ χερσαίοις καὶ ἐνύδροις ἅπασι τὸ γένος φυλάσσον ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἐπιγινομένων διαδοχῆς. Ἐκεῖθεν δὲ ἤδη πρὸς θερινὰς τροπὰς ἐπ' αὐτὴν τὴν ἄρκτον ἀπελαύνων ὁ ἥλιος, τὰς μεγίστας ἡμῖν τῶν ἡμερῶν περιίστησι. Καὶ διὰ τὸ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον προσομιλεῖν τῷ ἀέρι, αὐτόν τε καταφρύσσει τὸν ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ἡμῶν ἀέρα, καὶ τὴν γῆν πᾶσαν καταξηραίνει, τοῖς τε σπέρμασιν ἐκ τούτου συνεργῶν πρὸς τὴν ἅδρησιν, καὶ τοὺς τῶν δένδρων καρποὺς κατεπείγων ἐπὶ τὴν πέψιν: ὅτε καὶ φλογωδέστατός ἐστιν ἑαυτοῦ ὁ ἥλιος, βραχείας ποιῶν τὰς σκιὰς ἐπὶ τῆς μεσημβρίας, διὰ τὸ ἀφ' ὑψηλοῦ τὸν περὶ ἡμᾶς καταλάμπειν τόπον. Μέγισται γάρ εἰσιν ἡμερῶν, ἐν αἷς βραχύταταί εἰσιν αἱ σκιαὶ, καὶ βραχύταται πάλιν ἡμέραι, αἱ τὰς σκιὰς ἔχουσαι μακροτάτας. Καὶ τοῦτο παρ' ἡμῖν τοῖς ἑτεροσκίοις λεγομένοις ὅσοι τὰ ἀρκτῷα τῆς γῆς ἐποικοῦμεν: ἐπεὶ εἰσί γε ἤδη τινὲς οἱ κατὰ δύο ἡμέρας τοῦ παντὸς ἐνιαυτοῦ καὶ ἄσκιοι παντελῶς κατὰ τὴν μεσημβρίαν γινόμενοι, οὓς κατὰ κορυφῆς ἐπιλάμπων ὁ ἥλιος, ἐξίσου πανταχόθεν περιφωτίζει, ὥστε καὶ τῶν ἐν βάθει φρεάτων τὸ ὕδωρ διὰ στομίων στενῶν καταλάμπεσθαι: ὅθεν αὐτούς τινες καὶ ἀσκίους καλοῦσιν. Οἱ δὲ ἐπέκεινα τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου ἐπ' ἀμφότερα τὰς σκιὰς παραλλάσσουσιν. Μόνοι γὰρ ἐν τῇ καθ' ἡμᾶς οἰκουμένῃ ἐπὶ τὰ νότια κατὰ τὴν μεσημβρίαν τὰς σκιὰς ἀποπέμπουσιν: ὅθεν αὐτούς τινες καὶ ἀμφισκίους ὠνόμασαν. Ταῦτα δὲ πάντα πρὸς τὸ βόρειον μέρος παροδεύσαντος ἤδη γίνεται τοῦ ἡλίου. Ἐκ δὲ τούτων εἰκάζειν ἐστὶ τὴν ἐκ τῆς ἡλιακῆς ἀκτῖνος ἐγγινομένην πύρωσιν τῷ ἀέρι, ὅση τίς ἐστι, καὶ ποταπῶν ἀποτελεστικὴ συμπτωμάτων. Ἐντεῦθεν διαδεξαμένη ἡμᾶς τοῦ μετοπώρου ἡ ὥρα, ὑποθραύει μὲν τοῦ πνίγους τὸ ὑπερβάλλον, κατὰ μικρὸν δὲ ὑφιεῖσα τῆς θέρμης, διὰ τῆς κατὰ τὴν κρᾶσιν μεσότητος ἀβλαβῶς ἡμᾶς δι' ἑαυτῆς τῷ χειμῶνι προσάγει: δηλονότι τοῦ ἡλίου πάλιν ἀπὸ τῶν προσαρκτίων ἐπὶ τὰ νότια ὑποστρέφοντος. Αὗται τῶν ὡρῶν αἱ περιτροπαὶ, ταῖς κινήσεσιν ἑπόμεναι τοῦ ἡλίου, τὸν βίον ἡμῖν οἰκονομοῦσιν. Ἔστωσαν δὲ, φησὶ, καὶ εἰς ἡμέρας: οὐχ ὥστε ἡμέρας ποιεῖν, ἀλλ' ὥστε κατάρχειν τῶν ἡμερῶν. Ἡμέρα γὰρ καὶ νὺξ πρεσβύτερα τῆς τῶν φωστήρων γενέσεως. Τοῦτο γὰρ ἐνδείκνυται ἡμῖν καὶ ὁ ψαλμὸς λέγων: Ἔθετο ἥλιον εἰς ἐξουσίαν τῆς ἡμέρας, σελήνην καὶ ἀστέρας εἰς ἐξουσίαν τῆς νυκτός. Πῶς οὖν ἔχει τὴν ἐξουσίαν τῆς ἡμέρας ὁ ἥλιος; Ὅτι τὸ φῶς ἐν ἑαυτῷ περιφέρων, ἐπειδάν ποτε τὸν καθ' ἡμᾶς ὁρίζοντα ὑπεράρῃ, ἡμέραν παρέχει διαλύσας τὸ σκότος. Ὥστε οὐκ ἄν τις ἁμάρτοι, ἡμέραν ὁρισάμενος εἶναι τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου πεφωτισμένον ἀέρα: ἢ, ἡμέραν εἶναι χρόνου μέτρον ἐν ᾧ ἐν τῷ ὑπὲρ γῆν ἡμισφαιρίῳ ὁ ἥλιος διατρίβει. Ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς ἐνιαυτοὺς ἐτάχθησαν ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη. Σελήνη μὲν ἐπειδὰν δωδεκάκις τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἐκτελέσῃ δρόμον, ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐστι ποιητική: πλὴν ὅτι μηνὸς ἐμβολίμου δεῖται πολλάκις πρὸς τὴν ἀκριβῆ τῶν ὡρῶν συνδρομήν, ὡς Ἑβραῖοι τὸ παλαιὸν τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν ἦγον καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἱ ἀρχαιότατοι. Ἡλιακὸς δέ ἐστιν ἐνιαυτὸς ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτοῦ σημείου ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ σημεῖον κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν κίνησιν τοῦ ἡλίου ἀποκατάστασις.