Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/73

 On the Bating of Ancient History. 63 the name in the one case of years of Antioch 29, in the other of years of Actium or of Augustus. But the political Romanization of the world was accompanied by an event, which, in matters of time, was of far more consequence than any change of dynasty. This was the commencement of measuring time by Julian years. The years of Italy and of Greece had consisted of lunar months, which by various devices and cycles of omission and intercalation had been kept correspondent with the seasons, and made to compose, in a rough way, solar, or if we like to call them so, luni-solar years 30. This of course had required a com- plicated calendarian reckoning, which had been treated scien- tifically by the Greeks, and managed tolerably well ; but having been made a matter of aristocratical and priestly privilege at Rome, had gone there all wrong, so that the years were out of their place as to the seasons, and all in confusion. In Egypt the years were simply solar, and the months divisions of the year 31 : but since the year was reckoned of 365 days only, and no intercalation was used, the neglected quarter of a day accu- mulated and made the year move round through the seasons, till, in the famous Egyptian period of 1461 years each point in it moved through them all and came back to its previous position again 32 ; Caesar's reform, directed by Sosigenes, an astronomer of Alexandria, was to fix the Egyptian solar year as he thought he would do by intercalating a day every four years to make up for the neglected quarter, and then to introduce it at Rome instead of the year of lunar months, with its complicated intercalations. This reform, in which the imperial dominion of the West was 29 There was a wavering in these the science of cyclology, or calendar years of Antioch, as to reckoning them making. By a simple solar year is meant from the battle of Actium, or appa- here a year of months in which there is rently from the presence of Julius Caesar no longer any consideration of the revo- at Antioch, 1 7 years before. The usual lutions of the moon, as a simple lunar confusion about dynastial epochs was year would be one, like the modern perhaps involved with that from the Arab one, in which there was none of change of year. those of the sun : in either case one of 30 It is difficult to use correct Ian- the luminaries has turned out the other, guage in this matter, for properly all 31 That is 12 months of 30 days, months belong to the moon, and years and 5 pagomen, or eTrayo/xevai days, to to the sun, but these two luminaries, which for the fixing of the year, the chrononomically, get on very badly toge- quadriennial 6th was afterwards added, ther, and the business of keeping them 33 1461 Egyptian years being only in harmony gives full employment to 1460 solar revolutions.