Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/76

66 Journal of Philology, tures themselves. As Eratosthenes therefore had done for the earlier traditional events of Greek history, Eusebius and the Christian chronologers tried to fix the epochs of the recorded Scripture events, the Exodus, the birth of Abraham, the creation of the world 39 , &c. Any one of these would have made a good epoch for dating from, if it could but have come into general use : but unhappily, there was so much difference between the chronological numbers in the Hebrew, the Samaritan and the Septuagint accounts, as well as so much difficulty in the chro- nology itself, that no uniform epoch or dating could be esta- blished 40 . The second way in which Christianity tended to produce new dating was in the revival, after for a time the Julian year- measurement had superseded the necessity for them, of the calendarian or cyclical arrangements with all the trouble con- sequent on them, owing to the adoption of the Jewish or lunar reckoning for the fixing of the great Christian festival of Easter. The parts of Meton and Calippus had to be acted again by Christian Fathers, as we shall shortly see, and elaborate Paschal Cycles or Calendars were framed, and much used through the middle ages, for a way both of current and literary dating the most cumbrous of all, which may be called Calendar dating 41 , particularizing the year, that is, by its cyclical inci- dents, so that on looking at the Calendar, what year it was might be found. To this we shall have to return. The last way in which Christianity tended to new dating was 39 Eusebius's epoch of Abraham, time to an epoch, and then particula- whom he made contemporary with Se- rizes events as he leisurely descends, minimis, would have been an admirable 40 One mundane era however, called starting-point to count history from, if by Gibbon (c. 40 note, eud,) that of any body had luckily set it on foot as Julius Africanus, but shewn by M- U r such, which, considering the vast influ- to be slightly different from it, reckon- ence and popularity of Eusebius's chro- ing the creation at 5508 B.C. is still or nicle, might very well have been done. has been till lately, the reckoning in use It would have set off sacred and profane among the Greeks. It began to prevail history together, as the Trojan war in the 7th century, and appears in the Greek and Roman, leaving very little Paschal Chronicle, to be pre-epochally marked. Eusebius 41 Calendar or cyclical dating seems (and Jerome his interpreter) seems to never to have been used in the <*ncient have no idea of marking time backwards times except for the recording of astro- in detail, like our present retrograde nomical observat.'"S for which it was dating. He mounts by a few vigorous fitted, leaps, as well as he can, up the stream of