Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/66

 56 Journal of Philoloyy. himself an independent sovereign till many years after. The exact period however of course chosen to represent the begin- ning of a dynasty is very much a matter of chance and still more of caprice in the sovereign or in the people. This latter reckoning became very famous ; the former not so much so. In Egypt the Greek elements, though very strong, entered upon a country with a strong and rooted civilization of its own, and with the science of another old and famous country imported into it, for Babylon, for all scientific purposes, moved to Alexandria, and not to Antioch : the Greeks in Egypt used Egyptian months and cycles, and for science Nabonassarean years. But Syria was essentially a new kingdom 9. The Greeks there wishing to be nearer Europe, soon transferred their head- quarters from Babylon to the new-built Antioch : they became to a certain degree settlers rather than conquerors, that is, made things new instead of occupying the old, built new cities, which they were inclined at first to call, in settlers' fashion, by Mace- donian names, such as Pella: though soon the Asiatic and dynastic servility began, and the cities took the names of Apa- mea, Laodicea, Stratonicea 10, from every possible relation of the sovereign. They used the old Macedonian months and years, but very soon began the new practice of marking years not so much eponymously by the reigning sovereign, as epochally from the beginning of the dynasty. Their coins are constantly marked by the number of the year, counted from this epoch : and how the same reckoning was used for contemporary history as well as for the simple current dating, we may see in the books of the Maccabees 11, where the years are called years of the kingdom posed to have immediately succeeded 10 The dynastial or timonymous nam- Alexander, founding a new dynasty ing of places was another Oriental fashion upon Alexander's gift. which, like epochal dating, travelled 9 Alexandria, however, probably kept westwards with the mixture of West and up its connexion with Athens and Greece East in the time of Alexander. It more than Antioch did, and literary bore abundant fruit in Greece, as for dates there were the same as in Greece, instance Demetrias, Cassandreia, &c by Athenian archons, Olympiads, &c. : Philippi was an anticipation of Alexan- in Syria, though the Grecian element dria, as the reorganization of the Mace- was stronger at first, it seems more to donian kingdom by Philip was an anti- have degenerated from Hellenism, and cipationofthe half-military, half- oriental, to have more looked on the time of new royalties in the East. The Roman Alexander as the beginning of things. empire spread it over all the West. Still the Seleucid was in its origin a bar- n The formal commencement of a barian or Oriental, not a Greek, dating. dynastial epoch may be seen, r Mace.