the space of four years, whereby the Greeks reckoned time.—The first Olympiad fell, according to the accurate and learned computation of some of the moderns, exactly 776 years before the first year of Christ, or 775 before the year of his birth, in the year of the Julian period 3938, and 22 years before the building of the city of Rome. The games were exhibited at the time of the full moon next after the summer solstice; therefore the Olympiads were of unequal length, because the time of the full moon differs 11 days every year, and for that reason they sometimes began the next day after the solstice, and at other times four weeks after. The computation by Olympiads ceased, at some supposal, after the 304th, in the year 440 of the Christian era. It was universally adopted not only by the Greeks, but by many of the neighbouring countries; though still the Pythian games served as an epoch to the people of Delphi and to the Boeotians; the Nemean games to the Argives and Arcadians; and the Isthmian to the Corinthians and the inhabitants of the Peloponnesian isthmus. To the Olympiads history is much indebted. They have served to fix the time of many momentous events; and indeed before this method of computing time was observed, every page of history is mostly fabulous, and filled with obscurity and contradiction, and no true chronological account can be properly established and maintained with certainty.