Likewise, Eudoxus was probably also exposed to Babylonian reckoning. An exception is Meton who was probably exposed to or trained in Babylonian astrology because he described the summer solstice at Athens correctly in terms of the Babylonian zodiac in 432 B.C. The use of 360° base six (sexagesimal) notation is Babylonian. The Greeks used moonbreadths, cubits and fractions of a circle to measure arc before Hypsicles. This point however, with regard to the modern units employed, is moot because evidence for the use of degrees in extant Greek texts is wanting before the time of Hypsicles (mid-second century B.C.) who was a contemporary of Hipparchus. Until that time the equinox had been described in terms of the degree of the zodiac the Sun traversed when it reached the equinox, variously in the Greek world as 15°, 12°, 10°, 8°, 5° and 3° of Aries as precession slowly changed the Sun’s position in the zodiac at the time of the equinox. Late in the first millennium B.C., probably during the lifetime of Hipparchus of Rhodes (mid second century B.C.), the Greeks introduced an innovation in zodiac reckoning that had heretofore been sidereal in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean world for many centuries: they began to reckon the positions of planets and stars from the northern hemisphere vernal equinox.
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