CHRONOLOGY, 



CHRONOLOGY. 



890 



with the exception of the dates within brackets : " Hellanicus [B.C. 

 496-411] regulated his narration by the succession of the priestesses 

 of Juno at Argos. Ephorus [B.C. 300] digested things by generations. 

 The Arundelian marbles [B.C. 263] make no mention of olympiads, and 

 reckon backwards from the time then present by years. In the his- 

 tories of Herodotus [B.C. 484-413] and Thucydides [B.C. 471-391] the 

 dates of events are not ascertained by any fixed epochs. The olym- 

 piads were not commonly applied to this purpose in so early a period. 

 Tinueus of Sicily, who nourished in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphia 

 [B.C. 283-245], was the first who attempted to establish an sera, by 

 comparing and correcting the dates of the olympiads, the Spartan 

 kings, the archons of Athens, and the priestesses of Juno. Erato- 

 sthenes [B.C. 194], the father of chronology, and Apollodorus [B.C. 115] 

 digested the events recorded by them, according to the olympiads and 

 the succession of Spartan kings." When the olympiads were adopted 

 as an aora, the reckoning was made to commence from the games at 

 which Corcebus was the victor, being the first at which the name of 

 the victor was recorded. The olympiad of Corcebus accordingly is 

 considered in chronology as the first olympiad. Its date is placed 108 

 years after the restoration of the games by Iphitus, and is calculated 

 to correspond with the year B.C. 776. 



The statement we have just quoted from Playfair is given at greater 

 length, and with references to the authorities, in the first chapter of 

 Sir Isaac Newton's ' Chronology.' Of the names that have been men- 

 tioned, only Eratosthenes and Apollodorus can be considered as having 

 been systematizing chronologers, or as having employed themselves on 

 the science of chronology. The merits of Timaeus appear to have 

 consisted in his endeavouring to ascertain with greater precision than 

 any preceding historian the dates of the events of which he treated in 

 his histories of Sicily, of the wars of Pyrrhus, &c. An account of his 

 works is given in Clinton's ' Fasti Hellenici,' iii. 489-491. The frag- 

 ments of Timaeus have been collected by Goeller, in his work, ' De Situ 

 et Origine Syracusanorum,' 8vo, Leipzig, 1818. Eratosthenes, the 

 eminent astronomer, seems to have endeavoured to establish what may 

 be called a system of chronology by ascertaining the dates of certain 

 ancient events, which might serve as fixed points from which to reckon 

 all other events. We have no account however of the process by which 

 he arrived at his conclusions. The fragments of his chronological as 

 well as of his other writings, with the passages of the ancient authors 

 in which each is mentioned, and notes, have been published by Gottfr. 

 Bernhardy in a small volume, entitled ' Eratosthenica," 8vo., Berolini, 

 1822. The dates which he affixed to the principal events of antiquity 

 are given from Clemens Alexandrinus, in Clinton, i. 124. Those of 

 Apollodorus, who made some corrections on the system of Eratosthenes, 

 are given in Clinton, i. 125, as preserved by Eusebius on the authority 

 of Porphyry. Clinton has shown that the leading dates of Eratosthenes 

 and Apollodorus were adopted generally by subsequent chronologers, 

 both Greek and Latin. Among the Romans the most eminent autho- 

 rity in chronology was Varro, who flourished in the century imme- 

 diately preceding our aera, but of whose nnmerous and learned works 

 very little remains. Belonging to a much later age, the 3rd century 

 of our icra, there has been preserved the work of Censorinus, entitled 

 ' De Die Natali,' which is in the greater part a treatise on dates, epochs, 

 and other matters appertaining to the science of chronology. There 

 in a passage in the twenty-first chapter of Censorinus, containing a 

 memorandum of the distance of the year in which he wrote (A.D. 238) 

 from the first olympiad, from the building of Rome, from the reforma- 

 tion of the calendar by Julius Caesar, and from other epochs, which 

 has been thought so important to chronology, that Petau has attri- 

 buted its preservation to the special goodness of Providence. 



The establishment of the first olympiad as a common epoch may be 

 said to have given birth to chronology as a science, by introducing into 

 historical writing the general practice of dating events with reference 

 either to that or to some other fixed point. The principal business of 

 chronologers after this was to determine the relationship of each of 

 these epochs to every other. 



The common sera of the Roman historians commences from the 

 foundation of the city of Rome. But there was a great variety of 

 opinion among the ancients, as there has continued to be among the 

 modems, respecting the true date of this event. The Romans them- 

 selves for the most part followed either the computation of Cato, which 

 places it in B.C. 752, or that of Varro, which assigns it to B.C. 753. 

 Some writers, among others. Livy, appear to reckon sometimes by the 

 one, sometimes by the other ; most modern chronologers follow that of 

 Varro. This practice of dating events from the building of Rome may 

 be regarded as the first adoption of the simple method of reckoning 

 from a fixed point by single years, and as forming therefore one of the 

 great stages of chronology. 



Another usual mode of reckoning among the Latin historians was 

 by the annual consulships. Often both the year of the city and the 

 names of the consuls are given. 



The method of reckoning from the first olympiad was occasionally 

 employed long after the birth of Christ. "Some writers," says Play- 

 fair "have continued the use of the olympiads to the 312th year of 

 the'chriirtain era. Cedrenus (a Greek monk of the llth century) has 

 brought them 80 years lower, making the 393rd year of our Lord the 

 last olympian year." Sir Harris Nicolas (' Chronology of History, 

 p 2) speaks of the computation by olympiads having ceased after the 



364th olympiad, in the year of Christ 440. Particular writers may 

 have reckoned by olympiads down to that date, as they might down to 

 the present day ; but it had certainly long before ceased to be the 

 common practice to do so. From A.D. 312 the regular public mode of 

 computation throughout the Roman empire, both west and east, was 

 by the indictions, which were cycles or periods of fifteen years, begin- 

 ning with that year. [INDICTION.] The practice of dating events by 

 indictions was at one time followed in most of the kingdoms of modern 

 Europe, and in France was not altogether discontinued till the end of 

 the 15th century. The method of dating events from the birth of 

 Christ is said to have been first practised by a Roman monk named 

 Dionysius the Little about the year 527. It came into general use in 

 Italy before the termination of that century, but in France not until 

 the 8th century, in Spain not until the 14th, and in Portugal not till 

 after the commencement of the 15th. The method of reckoning from 

 this epoch, being now universally adopted throughout Christendom, 

 and being the only computation generally used both in historical 

 accounts of past events and in dating current time, has furnished a 

 chronological measure of much more extensive application than any 

 other which had preceded it. It is generally held that the birth of 

 Christ actually took place about four years earlier than the date 

 assigned to the event by Dionysius ; but this mistake of the inventor 

 of the vulgar sera does not affect its value as a scheme of chronological 

 notation. It is quite unimportant which the point is from which we 

 reckon, if it be a determinate point. 



There is one inconvenience however attending the choice of an event 

 for reckoning from so recent as the birth of Christ, namely, that it 

 necessarily introduces two modes of reckoning, and leaves the events 

 of a large, in fact of the largest, portion of history to be as it were 

 dated backwards, or according to the distance of each behind the 

 assumed epoch. Even the era of the olympiads was not free from this 

 objection ; for although, as we learn from Censorinus, Varro considered 

 the historical age to commence only with the first olympiad, the tra- 

 ditions even of the Greeks ascended to fully four hundred years beyond 

 that date. The histories and traditions of the Hebrews, and other 

 ancient nations, extend much farther back. To provide a more com- 



Erehensive mode of reckoning, Joseph Scaliger, in 15S2, invented what 

 e called (after Julius Caesar) the Julian period, being a cycle of 7980 

 years, which was made to begin at the year 4713 B.C. [PERIODS OP 

 REVOLUTION.] A period still more remote of 15,969 years was invented 

 by Jean Louis d' Amiens, and named the Louisian, in honour of 

 Louis XIV., but this has been very seldom used. 



If the date of the creation of the world, or rather of man's appear- 

 ance on the earth, could be certainly established, that would form the 

 natural and most convenient point from which to commence the 

 reckoning of time and to date the events of human history. None of 

 the ancient chronologers attempted to fix this point ; a common 

 opinion then held was, that the world was eternal : some conceived that 

 any attempt to discover the commencement of its existence would be an 

 act of impiety. Even among the Jews and Christians, whose sacred 

 writings begin their record of events from the creation, there has been 

 the greatest diversity of opinion as to that epoch. Kennedy in his 

 ' Scripture Chronology,' aifirms that 300 different opinions might be 

 collected as to the length of time that elapsed between the creation 

 and the incarnation. John Alb. Fabricius, in his ' Bibliotheca Anti- 

 quaria,' has given a list of 140 of these determinations. Dr. Hales, 

 in his ' New Analysis of Chronology,' has collected above 120. In 

 ' L'Art de verifier les Dates.' vol. i., p. 27, &e., is given a list of 108. 

 Playfair has given one of 88. Desvignoles, in the preface to his 

 ' Chronology of Sacred History,' asserts that he has collected above 

 200 such calculations, of which the longest makes the distance 

 between the two points to have been 6984, and the shortest only 

 3483 years. 



The uncertainty and controversy upon this subject have been prin- 

 cipally occasioned by the disagreement in the ages assigned to the 

 Patriarchs, and in other numbers, between the Hebrew text of the Old 

 Testament and the texts of the Samaritan and Septuagint versions. 

 From the creation to the deluge the computation of the Hebrew text 

 makes 1656 years to have elapsed ; the Samaritan version only 1307 ; 

 and the Septuagint 2262. The common opinion of modern theologians, 

 and also of chronologers, has been that the Hebrew text is correct ; 

 and it is upon this assumption that Archbishop Usher, whose reckoning 

 das been most generally adopted, has fixed the distance between the 

 creation and the birth of Christ at 4004 years. But those who hold a 

 contrary opinion, although the least numerous, have, according to 

 Bayle", been usually des savans d'elite, inquirers of a superior order. It 

 is maintained by Father Pezron, in his work ' De 1'AntiquiW des Terns,' 

 that the Hebrew text was designedly corrupted by the Jews in the 

 first century, and the time that had elapsed from the creation made 

 to appear shorter than it really was, in order to meet the argument 

 derived from what is said to have been an old Jewish tradition, that 

 the coming of the Messiah should take place when the world was 6000 

 years old. Rabbi Akiba is supposed by Pezron to have been the 

 author of the falsifications. Pezron makes the world to have been 

 5872 years old at the birth of Christ. The supposition of the cor- 

 ruption of the Hebrew text, and the preference due to the Greek 

 translation of the LXX., has been adopted and supported by Dr. Hales, 

 who will scarcely however be reckoned one of the savans d'tlite. 



