Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/89

 On tlie Dating of Ancient History. 79 reckoning, and next, " its being necessarily dependent on a supposition ascertained to be utterly wrong." The supposition on which the Christian era depends is utterly wrong: but the observations previously quoted seemed yet to allow it as a good epoch. This, however, is of little consequence : Niebuhr's characters of a good epoch are of more. The first is, its being early enough to compre- hend all really historical events in a forward dating : the second, its being applicable to the history of the nations which come under it : the third, its' having a reason for it which is permanent. On the first, how far I agree and how far differ, has been said above. The second and the third appear to me to be involved, for current dating, in the adop- tion of the epoch : whatever epoch is used, is practically applicable : for historical dating, I cannot enter into the idea of this applicability, as distinct from convenience. So far as it has any meaning, it must be, I should think, that we ought to adopt fo the exhibiting the history of a people, the current dating which was in use among themselves, by way of making the history more real : this historians generally, to a certain degree, do : but then, as I have said above, this dating is often not even epochal at all, and if it is, surely Mr Clinton's observation (F. H. Vol. in. p. xiii.) is very wise, " But still in addition to those particular eras which belong to the particular subject, some common measure is wanting by which their value can be ascertained and fixed." Nor are Niebuhr's illustrations of his principle happy: the Spanish era, if it was, as he says, " appropriate only so long as the Western empire lasted," was never, so far as we know, used for historical purposes at all, (even if it was for others) till after its appropriateness had ceased, and the Goths, not the Komans, were masters of Spain : and the giving way of it, for convenience sake, to the general usage of other nations, had nothing in common with the partial superseding of the epoch of Nabo- nassar by the next following dynastial epoch (in the way described above), to which Niebuhr likens it. The Spanish era, if it was a dynastial reckoning itself, was not superseded by a fresh one, but was supplanted by a rival epoch already in use. The observation, that U the Olympic era, like Greece, does not sur- vive Alexander, except as an empty name, while the era of Nabonassar, like Babylon, ceases about the same time altogether," is one which, in any view, is hardly worthy of Niebuhr. By the Olympic era he must intend the Olympic games (though even then the assertion has little enough of meaning or truth), for the Olympic era as a fact, that is the reckoning by Olympiads, did not begin till after Alexander : and that it was applicable then in every sense in which an historian need care for epochal applicability, we may conclude from the fact that it was gene- rally adopted and long continued. The ceasing altogether of the era of Nabonassar about the time of Alexander the reader may judge of: it being, as has been said, possible, that it was only after Alexander's time that the idea of an epoch of Nabonassar began at all, and certain that for several centuries afterwards astronomical observations were marked in