190 The Rev. E. Hincks on the Years and Cycles 



making, for example, the origin of the system to be the 7th of November, 1765 

 B. C, in place of the 8th November, 1767- Being desirous, however, of getting 

 rid even of this small uncertainty, I considered, in the first place, whether 

 Tacitus or Pliny was a priori most worthy of credit, as to his date of this pheno- 

 menon ; and, in the second place, what confirmation there might be obtained of 

 either date from independent sources. 



As to the first point, it appears to me that an annalist, like Tacitus, record- 

 ing the events that occurred in the period of which he treated in their regular 

 order, would be much less likely to go astray than a writer, like Pliny, who 

 merely recorded the date of an isolated fact. The confusion, which existed 

 among the chronologers of that period, with respect to the correct epoch of the 

 building of the city, might easily lead to an error of two years ; for, though Pliny 

 describes the year, in which the phoenix appeared, by its consuls, and not by the 

 year of the city, the author from whom Pliny copied may have used this latter 

 mode of describing the year ; and Pliny may have used consular Fasti, con- 

 structed on a different system from those which his author used ; e. g. the latter 

 may have stated, that the phoenix appeared A. U. C. 787, which would coincide 

 with the consulship of Fabius and Vitellius, according to the chronology of 

 Varro, or with A. D. 34 ; but Pliny may have understood him as speaking 

 according to the chronological system of Cato, in which A. U. C. 787 coincides 

 with the consulship of Papinius and Plautius, or A. D. 30.* Now, that this is the 

 true mode of accounting for the difference between Tacitus and Pliny, and that 

 the former was consequently in the right, is, I think, clearly established by this 

 fact. In the same passage, Pliny gives another consular date, which is likewise 

 two years after the date which would have been correct. Speaking of the cani- 

 cular cycle, he says that the 1225th year of it (for that is evidently what we should 

 read ; the m standing for 1000 having been dropped by a careless transcriber) 

 coincided with the year in which P. Licinius and Cn. Cornelius were consuls. 

 Now, the year of their consulship began in October or November of the proleptic 

 Julian year 98 B. C. ; but the canicular cycle was renewed A. D. 138, according 

 to the express testimony of Censorinus. The year which began in July, A. D. 

 138, was the first of the new, or the 1462nd of the old cycle ; whence it is easy to 

 see, that the year of that cycle, which would begin in September, 98 B. C, must 



* Niebuhr, in the thirty-seventh chapter of the second volume of his History of Rome, points 

 out an error of Livy of the same magnitude as this, which he attributes to a similar cause. 



