Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/67

 On the Dating of Ancient History. 51 of the Greeks 12. The reckoning was used long after the origin of Christianity, concurrently with the later forms of reckoning 13 : it became famous among the Arabs, where it was called of Dul- carnon (said to mean the two horned), probably in reference to Alexander 14. A new dynastial reckoning arose with the conquest of the East by the Romans : but before proceeding farther with Orien- tal marking of time, it is better to turn back to the Greeks, and see how it was marked with them. In Greece there had been nothing of what gave rise to the general and continuous dynastial reckoning of the East. Each little state had its own particular way of marking, and as was natural under such circumstances, the marking was simply epo- nymous: citizens of Athens knew probably the succession of archons by heart, or could in a moment discover any particular one. In history, which originally in Greece, as has been said, was either chorographic, as that of Herodotus for the most part in its detail is 15, or epic, embracing short periods of peculiar 13. 41, 42, where it is related how, in a certain year of the old reckoning, in con- sequence of the establishment of inde- pendence and of new rulers, a new reckoning was established, and then, c. 14. 27, the two reckonings, the old and the new, are given concurrently. We cannot conclude, however, even in this instance, that it was set up by authority, but only that the practice began of so dating, whether at the time of the epoch itself, we cannot tell. In the case of the Seleucid reckoning, the uncertainty of the occasion might lead one to ima- gine it began not veiy soon after the epoch, and irregularly : but new epochs were evidently now getting more and more the fashion, and more and more individual and particular. There was an odd mixture of national pride and of servility, of liberty and of despotism, in the idea of them. We may perhaps see in modern times, an illustration of the different feeling then of the East and West about epochs, in the different pro- ceedings of the French and the Ameri- cans at the end of the last century. Both began what they considered a new na- tional life, but the wise and more truly free nation never troubled themselves to reorganize their counting of time for that reason. 13 1 Mace. I. 10. 13 The formal description, by the Council of Chalcedon, A. D. 45 1, of the date of the previous one of Nice, is by the Roman consuls and the (Syrian) year of Alexander. (Norisius de Ep. Syrom. Diss. 2. c. 1, quoted by Ideler, Handb. der Chron. Vol. I. p. 448). The work of Norisius is full of interesting detail with regard to the Syrian cities. 14 From the horned head of Alexan- der on coins, as son of Jupiter Ammon. (Norisius ut sup.) who gives as the Ara- bic derivation his holding the two horna of the sun, i. e. the East and West. 15 The history of Herodotus is in its design ostentatiously epic, but it does not much take this character in detail till towards the end. The 5t' rjv alrlriv iToXifiTjaau dXKrjKoiai (Herod. Introd.) puts us in mind of Tis r ap a<pwe dew &c.