Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/81

 On the Voting of Ancient History. 71 the question, how the times before the epoch of our Lord's Incarnation were to be chronologically exhibited. There were three ways of doing it. The first and most natural, was to adopt some sort of mun- dane epoch, or year of the world, and this is what the mediaeval chroniclers did, and chronological tables, till about the middle of the "17th century, exhibited this. But there was the same difficulty again that there had been in the earlier times of Christianity : the chronology was so difficult and uncertain, that no generally recognized epoch could be adopted. About the 16th century began the plan of counting back- wards from the year of the birth of Christ, and representing the earlier history so. This may be considered the common way now, and is what most chronologers and calculators best ap- prove of. With the idea however of making the dates more classical and the history more apparently real, several modern investiga- tors of ancient history have preferred dating by the ancient epochs, Olympiads for instance, and years of Rome : Niebuhr is a strong partisan of the adoption of different epochs, accord- ing to the country whose history is being written. There should be mentioned here also the only attempt I believe which has been made of the kind, that by Scaliger, to introduce a general mathematically determined period which should include and serve as a frame for all history ; for this purpose he calculated what he called the Julian period, and recommended the conversion of all dates into it 46. Let us now examine a little the advantage and disadvantages ! of these various methods. First of all, since every historical epoch is an insecure as- sumption, only fixed by the use of it, and always liable to have its apparent foundations shaken by more accurate chronological knowledge, it is highly desirable that there should be but one of them, and that we should abstain from assuming others, or at 46 It is the Victorian or great Pas- see that there is any historical advantage chal cycle of 532 years multiplied into in it, other than distinctness, for it is as the number of years in the Indiction conventional as the most misnamed his- (15), and the period made to begin, for torical epoch, the Indiction being a mere chrononomical reasons beyond our pre- civil arbitrary arrangement : but it has sent consideration, in the year 47 13 B.C. been in extensive use among the earlier (Seal, de Em. Temp. 359). It is hard to scientific chronologers.