First point of Aries

This coincided with the festival of Hilaria, a time of optimism and beginnings where farmers began to sow or observed the first growth and blossoming of trees and summer crops.

[1] The naming of Aries is late in the Babylonian zodiac where the equinox was in its earliest tradition marked as in the early Middle Bronze Age by actual coincidence with the Pleiades.

[citation needed] Due to Earth's axial precession, this point gradually moves westwards at a rate of about one degree every 72 years.

The Sun now appears in Aries from late April until mid-May, though the constellation is still associated with the beginning of the northern spring.

The tropical Zodiac is similarly affected and no longer corresponds with the constellations (the Cusp of Libra today is located within Virgo).