Crossword-Solution: OCTENNIAL 9 letters, 7 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

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.

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.

But the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pæan with the harp.

The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of the god, including no other competition except in the harp and the pæan, was expanded into comprehensive games on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of gymnastics and chariots--celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha--and under the direct superintendence of the Amphictyons themselves.

The reason was, because he adopted 355 days as the length of his lunar year instead of 354, and this in 24 years (3 octennial periods) produced an error of 24 days; this error was exactly compensated by intercalating only 66 days (90-24) in the third octennial period.