Talk:Climacteric year

A fact from Climacteric year appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 June 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that climacteric years, occuring septennially, were considered critical and dangerous moments in an Ancient Greek's life?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/June.

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81 is not a multiple of 7. Perhaps it is a typo?--66.92.165.38 18:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The 81 actually referred to the alternate observance of every 9th year being a climacteric, so that the 81st year was the grand climacteric. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-10 18:54

Confusion of "normal" and "grand" climacterics

"Roman historian Suetonius says, Augustus congratulated his nephew upon his having passed his first grand climacteric, of which he was very apprehensive." This statement seems to contradict with the earlier phrase: "...the last of which was called the grand climacteric, with the dangers here being supposedly more imminent." So is there only one grand climacteric (the last one) or are there several? Or perhaps different astrologers said different things, but if that's the case it should be made more clear. --Edward Tremel 23:51, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I remember reading that they followed both the 7's and the 9's, so it would be 63 and 81, but you'd have to find a source to confirm. More likely, every climacteric after the first grand climacteric was another grand climacteric, since you're basically fighting old age. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-10 23:57

A good 17c source for this bit of very common knowledge is given in the article's own External links.... Bill (talk) 23:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit 12/19/07

Mindless parroting of the 18c Cyclopedia . . . it is in error about Augustus and nephew and climacteric in Suetonius: nowhere does Suetonius say anything of the sort. I replaced it, to retain at least some kind of content, by the clear statement of Gellius. The Cyclopedia is also in error as to Hevelius, which is certainly easy to verify. The observatory burned in 1679, Hevelius was born in 1611. A Google search returns [1], the Google capsule of which says "So he did, and Hevelius described his visit in detail in his book Annus Climactericus of 1685[7]. Hevelius gave the book its title because 1679 was 49years ..." — but that link is a pay site and I couldn't access the actual information. Bill (talk) 23:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I realized how one could get around the pay-site problem, at least for enough of the sentence, to extract the information: read Google's blurb on this search page; enough for me to fill out the article now.... Bill (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need to merge

There are some astrological points at Climacterial period that should surely all be absorbed into this larger article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.118.153.115 (talk) 05:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]