the space of four years, by which the Greeks reckoned time. According to the most accurate and learned computation of the moderns, the first Olympiad fell exactly 776 years before the first year of Christ, or 775 years anterior to his birth, in the year of the Julian period 3938, and twenty-two 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 eleven days every year; for which reason they sometimes began the next day after the solstice, and at other times four weeks afterwards. The computation by Olympiads ceased, as some suppose, 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 the Pythian games still 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 isthmus. To the Olympiads history has been greatly 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, being filled with such obscurity and contradiction, that no true chronological account can be properly established or maintained with certainty.