Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/23

 'in all history, where our information is exact, we direct our attention to some leading events, which mark the beginning of a new order of things, and we distribute our subject according to the character of affairs. But in the early times of Greece we are obliged to have in view the nature of our information in the distribution of the subject. It is enough if we can conjecture the probable date of a few principal facts, by comparing the scanty memorials and uncertain traditions which descended to posterity, and from which the learned of a later age composed their chronology.'

We can thus observe how all nations and races have worked from a simple to a complex chronology:—Beginning by mentioning the year (of the dynasty, reign, or other epoch), then adding the month, and finally the day of the month. Hence as civilization spread over the earth, and international communications grew more frequent, the subject of chronology became a more exact science. No longer content with scanty memorials, the custodiers of national records endeavoured to rescue the history of their own times from oblivion. But too often their efforts have been futile:—

Aided by such calamities as the destruction of the Fasti at Rome by the Gauls (B.C. 390), the burning of many sterling muniments in the Alexandrian Library in 391 A.D., and the sacking of Constantinople, with the MSS. lost thereby in 1453 A.D., the ravages of time have obliterated. much which was valuable in the records of epochs and