Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/72

 62 Journal of Philology. exactly : one date, that of Varro, was the most popular, and the most generally received ; and this, still in some respects it would appear in imitation of the Olympiads, became, for writers in the later years of Rome, in some degree, though never much, a systematic epochal reckoning. But in all ages of Rome, from the first consular times till the last imperial days, the eponymous reckoning by consuls, was the regular one, both for literature and civil or current dating, and the dating by years of the city took but very slight hold. This latter was probably, as has been said, suggested by the Olym- piads, and was used concurrently with them by writers of the Graeco-Roman period, who wrote for the whole world, such as Pliny ; and much trouble then would have been saved if Greeks and Romans had had a common, instead of only a cognate, epoch. But however much the conquest of the East brought Orontes to Tiber, and ruined old Rome, and grafted an Eastern despotism on Roman names and institutions, as it had done before on Macedonian, yet the great name of the city of Rome, and of Roman magistrates, never lost its honour; and the Romans kept on their eponymous city reckoning without its being super- seded by years of the emperors or years of any epoch, till consuls came quite to an end 27. We are now arrived, by way of the West, at the same point which we had before reached by way of the East ; the establish- ment of the Roman dominion over the world, which finished the bringing of the East and West together, and made civilization one. The opening of the Roman rule 28 in Syria and Egypt was accompanied with the usual change of dynastial reckoning, which has been spoken of before, and the new reckoning obtained 87 On the later periods and end of Hence arose in Asia as great a variety the consulship, see Gibbon, D. and F. of city epochs, or of particular numeric c. 1 7, towards the beginning, and c. 40, dating, as there has been in free Greece end. of eponymous. See on this (quoted by 38 The Roman conquest of Syria was Norisius, Ep. S. M. preface) the order declared and considered to be an esta- of Justinian that the Roman date of blishment of adrovofda in the cities as the Consul and Indiction should always distinguished from their previous state precede the particular city date : and of servitude, and various epochs of aiJ- the extract from Euseb. Chron. where Tovo/j.ia, according to the time at which he dates one year by the different epochs they came under the Romans, were of five different cities : Antioch, Tyre, marked and kept in different cities. Laodicoa, Edessa, and Ascalon.