[1] The velocity of the projectile is found thus. Let V be the
velocity of the bob, due to the impact of the projectile, _v_ the
velocity of the projectile, _h_ the height through which the bob is
raised vertically, then
V² ___
h = --, and V = \/2gh.
2g
If W be the weight of the bob, and _w_ the weight of the projectile,
then
/ W \ ___
wv = (W + w)V, and v = ( --- + 1 ) \/2gh.
\ w /
If _l_ be the true length of suspension, and C the length of the
chord of the arc of displacement of the bob after being struck, then
___
/ W \ / g
C² = 2hl, and v = ( --- + 1 ) / --- . C.
\ w / \/ l
Also if T be the time of a complete small oscillation of the
pendulum,
___
2[pi] / g
----- = / ---,
T \/ l
/ W \ 2[pi]C
so that v = ( --- + 1 ) ------.
\ w / T
CHRONOLOGY (Gr. [Greek: chronologia], computation of time, [Greek:
chronos]), the science which treats of time, its object being to arrange
and exhibit the various events which have occurred in the history of the
world in the order of their succession, and to ascertain the intervals
of time between them. The term "chronology" is also used of the order in
time itself, as adopted, and of the system by which the order is fixed.
The preservation of any record, however rude, of the lapse of time
implies some knowledge of the celestial motions, by which alone time can
be accurately measured, and some advancement in the arts of civilized
life, which could be attained only by the accumulated experience of many
generations (see TIME). Before the invention of letters the memory of
past transactions could not be preserved beyond a few years with any
tolerable degree of accuracy. Events which greatly affected the physical
condition of the human race, or were of a nature to make a deep
impression on the minds of the rude inhabitants of the earth, might be
vaguely transmitted through several ages by traditional narrative; but
intervals of time, expressed by abstract numbers, and these constantly
varying besides, would soon escape the memory. The invention of the art
of writing afforded the means of substituting precise and permanent
records for vague and evanescent tradition; but in the infancy of the
world, mankind had learned neither to estimate accurately the duration
of time, nor to refer passing events to any fixed epoch.
For these reasons the attempt at an accurate chronology of the early
ages of the world is only of recent origin. After political relations
began to be established, the necessity of preserving a register of
passing seasons and years would soon be felt, and the practice of
recording important transactions must have grown up as a necessary
consequence of social life. But of these deliberate early records a very
small portion only has escaped the ravages of time and barbarism.
The earliest written annals of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans are
irretrievably lost. The traditions of the Druids perished with them. A
Chinese emperor has the credit of burning "the books" extant in his day
(about 220 B.C.), and of burying alive the scholars who were acquainted
with them. And a Spanish adventurer destroyed the picture records which
were found in the _pueblo_ of Montezuma.
Of the more formal historical writings in which the first ineffectual
attempts were made in the direction of systematic chronology we have no
knowledge at first-hand. Of Hellanicus, the Greek logographer, who
appears to have lived through the greater part of the 5th century B.C.,
and who drew up a chronological list of the priestesses of Here at
Argos; of Ephorus, who lived in the 4th century B.C., and is
distinguished as the first Greek who attempted the composition of a
universal history; and of Timaeus, who in the following century wrote an
elaborate history of Sicily, in which he set the example of using the
Olympiads as the basis of chronology, the works have perished and our
meagre knowledge of their contents is derived only from fragmentary
citations in later writers. The same fate has befallen the works of
Berossus and Manetho, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus. Berossus, a priest
of Belus living at Babylon in the 3rd century B.C., added to his
historical account of Babylonia a chronological list of its kings, which
he claimed to have compiled from genuine archives preserved in the
temple. Manetho, likewise a priest, living at Sebennytus in Lower Egypt
in the 3rd century B.C., wrote in Greek a history of Egypt, with an
account of its thirty dynasties of sovereigns, which he professed to
have drawn from genuine archives in the keeping of the priests. Of these
works fragments only, more or less copious and accurate, have been
preserved. Eratosthenes, who in the latter half of the 2nd century B.C.
was keeper of the famous Alexandrian library, not only made himself a
great name by his important work on geography, but by his treatise
entitled _Chronographia_, one of the first attempts to establish an
exact scheme of general chronology, earned for himself the title of
"father of chronology." His method of procedure, however, was usually
conjectural; and guess-work, however careful, acute and plausible, is
still guess-work and not testimony. Apollodorus, an Athenian who
flourished in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., wrote a metrical
chronicle of events, ranging from the supposed period of the fall of
Troy to his own day. These writers were followed by other investigators
and systematizers in the same field, but their works are lost. Of the
principal later writers whose works are extant, and to whom we owe what
little knowledge we possess of the labours of their predecessors,
mention will be made hereafter.
The absence or incompleteness of authentic records, however, is not the
only source of obscurity and confusion in the chronology of remote ages.
There can be no exact computation of time or placing of events without
a fixed point or epoch from which the reckoning takes its start. It was
long before this was apprehended. When it began to be seen, various
epochs were selected by various writers; and at first each small
separate community had its own epoch and method of time-reckoning. Thus
in one city the reckoning was by succession of kings, in another by
archons or annual magistrates, in a third by succession of priests. It
seems now surprising that vague counting by generations should so long
have prevailed and satisfied the wants of inquiring men, and that so
simple, precise and seemingly obvious a plan as counting by years, the
largest natural division of time, did not occur to any investigator
before Eratosthenes.
Precision, which was at first unattainable for want of an epoch, was
afterwards no less unattainable from the multiplicity, and sometimes the
variation, of epochs. But by a natural process the mischief was
gradually and partially remedied. The extension of intercourse between
the various small groups or societies of men, and still more their union
in larger groups, made a common epoch necessary, and led to the adoption
of such a starting point by each larger group. These leading epochs
continued in use for many centuries. The task of the chronologer was
thus simplified and reduced to a study and comparison of dates in a few
leading systems.
The most important of these systems in what we call ancient times were
the Babylonian, the Greek and the Roman. The Jews had no general era,
properly so called. In the history of Babylonia, the fixed point from
which time was reckoned was the era of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. Among the
Greeks the reckoning was by Olympiads, the point of departure being the
year in which Coroebus was victor in the Olympic Games, 776 B.C. The
Roman chronology started from the foundation of the city, the year of
which, however, was variously given by different authors. The most
generally adopted was that assigned by Varro, 753 B.C. It is noteworthy
how nearly these three great epochs approach each other,--all lying near
the middle of the 8th century B.C. But it is to be remembered that the
beginning of an era and its adoption and use as such are not the same
thing, nor are they necessarily synchronous. Of the three ancient eras
above spoken of, the earliest is that of the Olympiads, next that of the
foundation of Rome, and the latest the era of Nabonassar. But in order
of adoption and actual usage the last is first. It is believed to have
been in use from the year of its origin. It is not known when the Romans
began to use their era. The Olympiads were not in current use till about
the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when Timaeus, as already mentioned,
set the example of reckoning by them.
Even after the adoption in Europe of the Christian era, a great variety
of methods of dating--national, provincial and ecclesiastical--grew up
and prevailed for a long time in different countries, thus renewing in
modern times the difficulties experienced in ancient times from
diversities of reckoning. An acquaintance with these various methods is
indispensable to the student of the charters, chronicles and legal
instruments of the middle ages.
In reckoning years from any fixed epoch in constant succession, the
number denoting the years is necessarily always on the increase. But
rude nations and illiterate people seldom attach any definite idea to
large numbers. Hence it has been a practice, very extensively followed,
to employ cycles or periods, consisting of a moderate number of years,
and to distinguish and reckon the years by their number in the cycle.
The Chinese and other nations of Asia reckon, not only the years, but
also the months and days, by cycles of sixty. The Saros of the
Chaldaeans, the Olympiad of the Greeks, and the Roman Indiction are
instances of this mode of reckoning time. Several cycles were formerly
known in Europe; but most of them were invented for the purpose of
adjusting the solar and lunar divisions of time, and were rather
employed in the regulation of the calendar than as chronological eras.
They are frequently, however, of very great use in fixing dates that
have been otherwise imperfectly expressed, and consequently form
important elements of chronology. (W. L. R. C.)
_Modern Results of Archaeological Research_.
When Queen Victoria came to the English throne, 4004 B.C. was still
accepted, in all sobriety, as the date of the creation of the world.
Perhaps no single statement could more vividly emphasize the change in
the point of view from which scholars regard the chronology of ancient
history than the citation of this indisputable fact. To-day, though
Bibles are still printed with the year 4004 B.C. in the margin of the
first chapter of Genesis, no scholar would pretend to regard this
reference seriously. On the contrary, the scholarship of to-day regards
the fifth millennium B.C. as well within the historical period for such
nations as the Egyptians and the Babylonians. It has come to be fully
accepted that when we use such a phrase as "the age of the world" we are
dealing with a period that must be measured not in thousands but in
millions of years; and that to the age of man must be allotted a period
some hundreds of times as great as the five thousand and odd years
allowed by the old chronologists. This changed point of view, needless
to say, has not been reached without ardent and even bitter controversy.
Yet the transformation is unequivocal; and the revised conception no
longer seems to connote the theological implications that were at first
ascribed to it. It has now become obvious that the data afforded by the
Hebrew writings should never have been regarded as sufficiently accurate
for the purpose of exact historical computations: that, in short, no
historian working along modern scientific lines could well have made the
mistake of supposing that the genealogical lists of the Pentateuch
afforded an adequate chronology of world-history. But it should not be
forgotten that to many generations of close scholarship these
genealogical lists seemed to convey such knowledge in the most precise
terms, and that at so recent a date as, for example, the year in which
Queen Victoria came to the throne, it was nothing less than a rank
heresy to question the historical accuracy and finality of chronologies
which had no other source or foundation.
This changed point of view regarding the chronology of history may
without hesitation be ascribed to the influence of evidence obtained in
a single field of inquiry, the field, namely, of archaeology. No doubt
the evidence as to the age of the earth and as to the antiquity of man
was gathered by a class of workers not formally included in the ranks of
the archaeologist: workers commonly spoken of as palaeontologists,
anthropologists, ethnologists and the like. But the distinction scarcely
covers a real difference. The scope of the archaeologist's studies must
include every department of the ancient history of man as preserved in
antiquities of whatever character, be they tumuli along the Baltic,
fossil skulls and graven bones from the caves of France, the flint
implements, pottery, and mummies of Egypt, tablets and bas-reliefs from
Mesopotamia, coins and sculptures of Greece and Rome, or inscriptions,
waxen tablets, parchment rolls, and papyri of a relatively late period
of classical antiquity. If at one time the monuments of Greece and Rome
claimed the almost undisputed attention of the archaeologist, that time
has long since passed. For the most important historical records that
have come to us in recent decades we have to thank the Orientalist,
though the classical explorer has been by no means idle. It will be
sufficient here to point out in general terms the import of the message
of archaeological discovery in the Victorian Era in its bearings upon
the great problems of world-history.
Chronology of ancient history.
A start was made through the efforts of the palaeontologists and
geologists, with only indirect or incidental aid from the
archaeologists. The new movement began actively with James Hutton in the
later years of the 18th century, and was forwarded by the studies of
William Smith in England and of Cuvier in France; but the really
efficient champion of the conception that the earth is very old was Sir
Charles Lyell, who published the first edition of his epoch-making
_Principles of Geology_ only a few years before Queen Victoria came to
the throne. Lyell demonstrated to the satisfaction, or--perhaps it
should rather be said--to the dissatisfaction, of his contemporaries
that the story of the geological ages as recorded in the strata of the
earth becomes intelligible only when vast stretches of time are
presupposed. Of course the demonstration was not accepted at once. On
the contrary, the champions of the tradition that the earth was less
than six thousand years old held their ground most tenaciously, and the
earlier years of the Victorian era were years of bitter controversy. The
result of the contest was never in doubt, however, for the geological
evidence, once it had been gathered, was unequivocal; and by about the
middle of the century it was pretty generally admitted that the age of
the earth must be measured by an utterly different standard from that
hitherto in vogue. This concession, however, by no means implied a like
change of view regarding the age of man. A fresh volume of evidence
required to be gathered, and a new controversy to be waged, before the
old data for the creation of man could be abandoned. Lyell again was in
the forefront of the progressive movement, and his work on _The
Antiquity of Man_, published in 1863, gave currency for the first time
to the new opinions. The evidence upon which these opinions were based
had been gathered by such anthropologists as Schmerling, Boucher de
Perthes and others, and it had to do chiefly with the finding of
implements of human construction associated with the remains of extinct
animals in the beds of caves, and with the recovery of similar
antiquities from alluvial deposits the great age of which was
demonstrated by their depth. Every item of the evidence was naturally
subjected to the closest scrutiny, but at last the conservatives were
forced reluctantly to confess themselves beaten. Their traditional
arguments were powerless before the array of data marshalled by the new
science of prehistoric archaeology. Looking back even at the short
remove of a single generation, it is difficult to appreciate how
revolutionary was the conception of the antiquity of man thus
inculcated. It rudely shocked the traditional attitude of scholarship
towards the history of our race. It disturbed the most cherished
traditions and the most sacred themes. It seemed to threaten the very
foundations of religion itself. Yet the present generation accepts the
antiquity of man as a mere matter of fact. Here, as so often elsewhere,
the heresy of an elder day has come to seem almost an axiomatic truth.
If we go back in imagination to the beginning of the Victorian era and
ask what was then known of the history of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and
Asia Minor, we find ourselves confronted with a startling paucity of
knowledge. The key to the mysteries of Egyptian history had indeed been
found, thanks to the recent efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion, but
the deciphering of inscriptions had not yet progressed far enough to
give more than a vague inkling of what was to follow. It remained, then,
virtually true, as it had been for two thousand years, that for all that
we could learn of the history of the Old Orient in pre-classical days,
we must go solely to the pages of the Bible and to a few classical
authors, notably Herodotus and Diodorus. A comparatively few pages
summed up, in language often vague and mystical, all that the modern
world had been permitted to remember of the history of the greatest
nations of antiquity. To these nations the classical writers had
ascribed a traditional importance, the glamour of which still lighted
their names, albeit revealing them in the vague twilight of tradition
rather than in the clear light of history. It would have been a bold,
not to say a reckless, dreamer who dared predict that any future
researches could restore to us the lost knowledge that had been
forgotten for more than two millenniums. Yet the Victorian era was
scarcely ushered in before the work of rehabilitation began, which was
to lead to the most astounding discoveries and to an altogether
unprecedented extension of historical knowledge. Early in the 'forties
the Frenchman Botta, quickly followed by Sir Henry Layard, began making
excavations on the site of ancient Nineveh, the name and fame of which
were a tradition having scarcely more than mythical status. The spade of
the discoverer soon showed that all the fabled glories of the ancient
Assyrian capital were founded on realities, and evidence was afforded of
a state of civilization and culture such as few men supposed to have
existed on the earth before the Golden Age of Greece. Not merely were
artistic sculptures and bas-reliefs found that demonstrated a high
development of artistic genius, but great libraries were soon
revealed,--books consisting of bricks of various sizes, or of cylinders
of the same material, inscribed while in the state of clay with curious
characters which became indelible when baking transformed the clay into
brick. No one was able to guess, even in the vaguest way, the exact
interpretation of these odd characters; but, on the other hand, no one
could doubt that they constituted a system of writing, and that the
piles of inscribed tablets were veritable books. There were numerous
sceptics, however, who did not hesitate to assert that the import of the
message so obviously locked in these curious inscriptions must for ever
remain an absolute mystery. Here, it was said, were inscriptions written
in an unknown character and in a language that for at least two thousand
years had been absolutely forgotten. In such circumstances nothing less
than a miracle could enable human ingenuity to fathom the secret. Yet
the feat pronounced impossible by mid-century scepticism was
accomplished by contemporary scholarship, amidst the clamour of
opposition and incredulity. Its success contains at once a warning to
those doubters who are always crying out that we have reached the
limitations of knowledge, and an encouragement and stimulus to would-be
explorers of new intellectual realms.
In a few words the manner of the discovery was this. It appears at a
glance that the Assyrian written character consists of groups of
horizontal, vertical or oblique strokes. The characters thus composed,
though so simple as to their basal unit, are appallingly complex in
their elaboration. The Assyrians with all their culture, never attained
the stage of analysis which demonstrates that only a few fundamental
sounds are involved in human speech, and hence that it is possible to
express all the niceties of utterance with an alphabet of little more
than a score of letters. Halting just short of this analysis, the
Assyrian ascribed syllabic values to the characters of his script, and
hence, instead of finding twenty odd characters sufficient, he required
about five hundred. There was a further complication in that each one of
these characters had at least two different phonetic values; and there
were other intricacies of usage which, had they been foreknown by
inquirers in the middle of the 19th century, might well have made the
problem of decipherment seem an utterly hopeless one. Fortunately it
chanced that another people, the Persians, had adopted the Assyrian
wedge-shaped stroke as the foundation of a written character, but making
that analysis of which the Assyrians had fallen short, had borrowed only
so many characters as were necessary to represent the alphabetical
sounds. This made the problem of deciphering Persian inscriptions a
relatively easy one. In point of fact this problem had been partially
solved in the early days of the 19th century, thanks to the sagacious
guesses of the German philologist Grotefend. Working with some
inscriptions from Persepolis which were found to contain references to
Darius and Xerxes, Grotefend had established the phonetic values of
certain of the Persian characters, and his successors were perfecting
the discovery just about the time when the new Assyrian finds were made.
It chanced that there existed on the polished surface of a cliff at
Behistun in western Persia a tri-lingual inscription which, according to
Diodorus, had been made by Queen Semiramis of Nineveh, but which, as is
now known, was really the work of King Darius. One of the languages of
this inscription was Persian; another, as it now appeared, was Assyrian,
the language of the newly discovered books from the libraries of
Nineveh. There was reason to suppose that the inscriptions were
identical in meaning; and fortunately it proved, when the inscriptions
were made accessible to investigation through the efforts of Sir Henry
Rawlinson, that the Persian inscription contained a large number of
proper names. It was well known that proper names are usually
transcribed from one language into another with a tolerably close
retention of their original sounds. For example, the Greek names
_Ptolemaios_ and _Kleopatra_ became a part of the Egyptian language and
appeared regularly in Egyptian inscriptions after Alexander's general
became king of Egypt. Similarly, the Greek names _Kyros_, _Dareios_ and
_Xerxes_ were as close an imitation as practicable of the native names
of these Persian monarchs. Assuming, then, that the proper names found
in the Persian portion of the Behistun inscription occurred also in the
Assyrian portion, retaining virtually the same sound in each, a clue to
the phonetic values of a large number of the Assyrian characters was
obviously at hand. Phonetic values known, Assyrian was found to be a
Semitic language cognate to Hebrew.
These clues were followed up by a considerable number of investigators,
with Sir Henry Rawlinson in the van. Thanks to their efforts, the new
science of Assyriology came into being, and before long the message of
the Assyrian books had ceased to be an enigma. Of course this work was
not accomplished in a day or in a year, but, considering the
difficulties to be overcome, it was carried forward with marvellous
expedition. In 1857 the new scholarship was put to a famous test, in
which the challenge thrown down by Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Ernest
Renan was met by Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert and Fox Talbot in a
conclusive manner. The sceptics had declared that the new science of
Assyriology was itself a myth: that the investigators, self-deceived,
had in reality only invented a language and read into the Assyrian
inscriptions something utterly alien to the minds of the Assyrians
themselves. But when a committee of the Royal Asiatic Society, with
George Grote at its head, decided that the translations of an Assyrian
text made independently by the scholars just named were at once
perfectly intelligible and closely in accord with one another,
scepticism was silenced, and the new science was admitted to have made
good its claims.
Naturally the early investigators did not fathom all the niceties of the
language, and the work of grammatical investigation has gone on
continuously under the auspices of a constantly growing band of workers.
Doubtless much still remains to be done; but the essential thing, from
the present standpoint, is that a sufficient knowledge of the Assyrian
language has been acquired to ensure trustworthy translations of the
cuneiform texts. Meanwhile, the material found by Botta and Layard, and
other successors, in the ruins of Nineveh, has been constantly augmented
through the efforts of companies of other investigators, and not merely
Assyrian, but much earlier Babylonian and Chaldaean texts in the
greatest profusion have been brought to the various museums of Europe
and America. The study of these different inscriptions has utterly
revolutionized our knowledge of Oriental history. Many of the documents
are strictly historical in their character, giving full and accurate
contemporary accounts of events that occurred some thousands of years
ago. Exact dates are fixed for long series of events that previously
were quite unknown. Monarchs whose very names had been forgotten are
restored to history, and the records of their deeds inscribed under
their very eyes are before us,--contemporary documents such as neither
Greece nor Rome could boast, nor any other nation, with the single
exception of Egypt, until strictly modern times. There are, no doubt,
gaps in the record; there are long periods for which the chronology is
still uncertain. Naturally there is an increasing vagueness as one
recedes farther into the past, and for the earlier history of Chaldaea
there is great uncertainty. Nevertheless, the Assyriologist speaks with
a good deal of confidence of dates as remote as 3800 B.C., the time
ascribed to King Sargon, who was once regarded as a mythical person, but
is now known to have been an actual monarch. Indeed, there are tablets
in the British Museum labelled 4500 B.C.; and later researches,
particularly those of the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania
at Nippur, have brought us evidence which, interpreted with the aid of
estimates as to the average rate of accumulation of dust deposits, leads
to the inference that a high state of civilization had been attained in
Mesopotamia at least 9000 years ago.
While the Assyriologists have been making these astonishing revelations,
the Egyptologists have not been behindhand. Such scholars as Lepsius,
Brugsch, de Rougé, Lenormant, Birch, Mariette, Maspero and Erman have
perfected the studies of Young and Champollion; while at the same time
these and a considerable company of other explorers, most notable of
whom are Gardner Wilkinson and Professor Flinders Petrie, have brought
to light a vast accumulation of new material, much of which has the
highest importance from the standpoint of the historian. Lists of kings
found on the temple wall at Abydos, in the fragments of the Turin
papyrus and elsewhere, have cleared up many doubtful points in the lists
of Manetho, and at the same time, as Professor Petrie has pointed out,
have proved to us how true a historian that much-discussed writer was.
Manetho, it will be recalled, was the Egyptian who wrote the history of
Egypt in Greek in the time of the Ptolemies. His work in the original
unfortunately perished, and all that we know of it we learn through
excerpts made by a few later classical writers. These fragments have
until recently, however, given us our only clue to the earlier periods
of Egyptian history. Until corroboration was found in the Egyptian
inscriptions themselves, not only were Manetho's lists in doubt, but
scepticism had been carried to the point of denying that Manetho himself
had ever existed. This is only one of many cases where the
investigations of the archaeologist have proved not iconoclastic but
reconstructive, tending to restore confidence in classical traditions
which the scientific historians of the age of Niebuhr and George
Cornewall Lewis regarded with scepticism.
As to the exact dates of early Egyptian history there is rather more of
vagueness than for the corresponding periods of Mesopotamia. Indeed,
approximate accuracy is not attained until we are within sixteen hundred
years of our own era; but the sequence of events of a period preceding
this by two thousand years is well established, and the recent
discoveries of Professor Petrie carry back the record to a period which
cannot well be less than five thousand, perhaps not less than six
thousand years B.C. Both from Egypt and Mesopotamia, then, the records
of the archaeologist have brought us evidence of the existence of a
highly developed civilization for a period exceeding by hundreds,
perhaps by thousands, of years the term which had hitherto been
considered the full period of man's existence.
We may note at once how these new figures disturb the historical
balance. If our forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in
a noonday glare of civilization, where shall we look for the
much-talked-of "dawnings of history"? By this new standard the Romans
seem our contemporaries in latter-day civilization; the "Golden Age" of
Greece is but of yesterday; the pyramid-builders are only relatively
remote. The men who built the temple of Bel at Nippur, in the year (say)
5000 B.C., must have felt themselves at a pinnacle of civilization and
culture. As Professor Mahaffy has suggested, the era of the Pyramids may
have been the veritable autumn of civilization. Where, then, must we
look for its springtime? The answer to that question must come, if it
come at all, from what we now speak of as prehistoric archaeology; the
monuments from Memphis and Nippur and Nineveh, covering a mere ten
thousand years or so, are the records of recent history.
Archaeology and Bible history.
The efforts of the students of Oriental archaeology have been constantly
stimulated by the fact that their studies brought them more or less
within the field of Bible history. A fair proportion of the workers who
have delved so enthusiastically in the fields of Egyptian and Assyrian
exploration would never have taken up the work at all but for the hope
that their investigations might substantiate the Hebrew records. For a
long time this hope proved illusory, and in the case of Egyptian
archaeology the results have proved disappointing even up to the very
present. Considering the important part played by the Egyptian sojourn
of the Hebrews, as narrated in the Scriptures, it was certainly not an
over-enthusiastic prediction that the Egyptian monuments when fully
investigated would divulge important references to Joseph, to Moses, and
to the all-important incidents of the Exodus; but half a century of
expectant attention in this direction has led only to disappointment. It
would be rash, considering the buried treasures that may yet await the
future explorer, to assert that such records as those in question can
never come to light. But, considering the fulness of the contemporary
Egyptian records of the XIXth dynasty that are already known, it becomes
increasingly doubtful whether the Hebrews in Egypt played so important
a part in history, when viewed from the Egyptian standpoint, as their
own records had seemed to imply. As the forgotten history of Oriental
antiquity has been restored to us, it has come to be understood that,
politically speaking, the Hebrews were a relatively insignificant
people, whose chief importance from the standpoint of material history
was derived from the geographical accident that made them a sort of
buffer between the greater nations about them. Only once, and for a
brief period, in the reigns of David and Solomon did the Hebrews rise to
anything like an equal plane of political importance with their
immediate neighbours. What gave them a seeming importance in the eyes of
posterity was the fact that the true history of the Egyptians,
Mesopotamians, Arabians and Hittites had been well-nigh forgotten. The
various literatures of these nations were locked from view for more than
two thousand years, while the literature of Israel had not merely been
preserved, but had come to be regarded as inspired and sacred among all
the cultured nations of the Western world. Now that the lost literatures
have been restored to us, the status of the Hebrew writings could not
fail to be disturbed. Their very isolation had in some measure accounted
for their seeming importance.
All true historical perspective is based upon comparison, and where only
a single account has been preserved of any event or of any period of
history, it is extremely difficult to judge that account with historical
accuracy. An illustration of this truth is furnished in profane history
by the account which Thucydides has given us of the Peloponnesian War.
For most of the period in question Thucydides is the only source; and
despite the inherent merits of a great writer, it can hardly be doubted
that the tribute of almost unqualified praise that successive
generations of scholars have paid to Thucydides must have been in some
measure qualified if, for example, a Spartan account of the
Peloponnesian War had been preserved to us. Professor Mahaffy has
pointed out that many other events in Greek history are viewed by us in
somewhat perverted perspective because the great writers of Greece were
Athenians rather than Spartans or Thebans. Even in so important a matter
as the great conflict between Persia and Greece it has been suggested
more than once that we should be able to gain a much truer view were
Persian as well as Greek accounts accessible.
Not many years ago it would have been accounted a heresy to suggest that
the historical books of the Old Testament had conveyed to our minds
estimates of Oriental history that suffered from this same defect; but
to-day no one who is competent to speak with authority pretends to doubt
that such is really the fact. Even conservative students of the Bible
urge that its historical passages must be viewed precisely in the light
of any other historical writings of antiquity; and the fact that the
oldest Hebrew manuscript dates only from the 8th century A.D., and
therefore of necessity brings to us the message of antiquity through the
fallible medium of many generations of copyists, is far more clearly
kept in mind than it formerly was. Every belief of mankind is in the
last analysis amenable to reason, and finds its origin in evidence that
can appeal to the arbitrament of common sense. This evidence may in
certain cases consist chiefly of the fact that generations of our
predecessors have taken a certain view regarding a certain question;
indeed most of our cherished beliefs have this foundation. But when such
is the case, mankind has never failed in the long run to vindicate its
claim to rationality by showing a readiness to give up the old belief
whenever tangible evidence of its fallaciousness was forthcoming. The
case of the historical books of the Old Testament furnishes no
exception. These had been sacred to almost a hundred generations of men,
and it was difficult for the eye of faith to see them as other than
absolutely infallible documents. Yet the very eagerness with which the
champions of the Hebrew records searched for archaeological proofs of
their validity was a tacit confession that even the most unwavering
faith was not beyond the reach of external evidence. True, the believer
sought corroboration with full faith that he would find it; but the very
fact that he could think such external corroboration valuable implied,
however little he may have realized it, the subconscious concession that
he must accept external evidence at its full value, even should it prove
contradictory. If, then, an Egyptian inscription of the XIXth dynasty
had come to hand in which the names of Joseph and Moses, and the deeds
of the Israelites as a subject people who finally escaped from bondage
by crossing the Red Sea, were recorded in hieroglyphic characters, such
a monument would have been hailed with enthusiastic delight by every
champion of the Pentateuch, and a wave of supreme satisfaction would
have passed over all Christendom. It is not too much, then, to say that
failure to find such a monument has caused deep disappointment to Bible
scholars everywhere. It does not follow that faith in the Bible record
is shaken, although in some quarters there has been a pronounced
tendency to regard the history of the Egyptian sojourn as mythical; yet
it cannot be denied that Egyptian records, corroborating at least some
phases of the Bible story, would have been a most welcome addition to
our knowledge. Some recent finds have, indeed, seemed to make
inferential reference to the Hebrews, and the marvellous collection of
letters of the XVIIIth dynasty found at Tel el-Amarna--letters to which
we shall refer later--have the utmost importance as proving a possible
early date for the Mosaic accounts. But such inferences as these are but
a vague return for the labour expended, and an almost cruelly inadequate
response to seemingly well-founded expectations.
When we turn to the field of Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology,
however, the case is very different. Here we have documents in abundance
that deal specifically with events more or less referred to in the
Bible. The records of kings whose names hitherto were known to us only
through Bible references have been found in the ruins of Nineveh and
Babylon, and personages hitherto but shadowy now step forth as clearly
into the light of history as an Alexander or a Caesar. Moreover, the
newly discovered treasures deal with the beliefs of the people as well
as with their history proper. The story of the books now spoken of as
the "Creation" and "Deluge" tablets of the Assyrians, in the British
Museum, which were discovered in the ruins of Nineveh by Layard and by
George Smith, has been familiar to every one for a good many years. The
acute interest which they excited when George Smith deciphered their
contents in 1872 has to some extent abated, but this is only because
scholars are now pretty generally agreed as to their bearing on the
corresponding parts of Genesis. The particular tablets in question date
only from about the 7th century B.C., but it is agreed among
Assyriologists that they are copies of older texts current in Babylonia
for many centuries before, and it is obvious that the compilers of
Genesis had access to the Babylonian stories. In a word, the Hebrew
Genesis shows unequivocal evidence of Babylonian origin, but, in the
words of Professor Sayce, it is but "a paraphrase and not a
translation." However disconcerting such a revelation as this would have
been to the theologians of an elder day, the Bible scholars of our own
generation are able to regard it with entire composure.
From the standpoint of the historian even greater interest attaches to
the records of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings when compared with the
historical books of the Old Testament. For some centuries the
inhabitants of Palestine were subject to periodical attacks from the
warlike inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as even the most casual reader of
the Bible is aware. When it became known that the accounts of these
invasions formed a part of the records preserved in the Assyrian
libraries, historian and theologian alike waited with breathless
interest for the exact revelations in store; and this time expectation
was not disappointed. As, one after another, the various tablets and
cylinders and annalistic tablets have been translated, it has become
increasingly clear that here are almost inexhaustible fountains of
knowledge, and that sooner or later it may be possible to check the
Hebrew accounts of the most important periods of their history with
contemporaneous accounts written from another point of view. It is true
that the cases are not very numerous where precisely the same event is
described from opposite points of view, but, speaking in general terms
rather than of specific incidents, we are already able to subject
considerable portions of history to this test. The records of
Shalmaneser II., Tiglath-Pileser III. and Sennacherib, kings of Assyria,
of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and of Cyrus, king of Persia, all
contain direct references to Hebrew history. An obelisk of Shalmaneser
II. contains explicit reference to the tribute of Jehu of Samaria, and
graphically depicts the Hebrew captives. Tiglath-Pileser III., a usurper
who came to the throne of Assyria in 745 B.C., and whose earlier name of
Pul proved a source of confusion to the later Hebrew writers, left
records that have served to clear up the puzzling chronology of a
considerable period of the history of Samaria. Most interesting of all,
perhaps, are the annals of Sennacherib, the destruction of whose hosts
by the angel of God is so strikingly depicted in the Book of Kings. The
court historian of Sennacherib naturally does not dwell upon this event,
but he does tell of an invasion and conquest of Palestine. The Hebrew
account of the death of Sennacherib is corroborated by a Babylonian
inscription. Here, however, there is an interesting qualification. The
account in the Book of Kings is so phrased that one might naturally
infer from it that Sennacherib was assassinated by his sons immediately
after his return from the disastrous campaign in Palestine; but in point
of fact, as it now appears, the Assyrian king survived that campaign by
twenty years. One cannot avoid the suspicion that in this instance the
Hebrew chronicler purposely phrased his account to convey the impression
that Sennacherib's tragic end was but the slightly delayed culmination
of the punishment inflicted for his attack upon the "chosen people." On
the other hand, the ambiguity may be quite unintentional, for the Hebrew
writers were notoriously lacking in the true historical sense, which
shows itself in a full appreciation of the value of chronology.
One of the most striking instances of the way in which mistakes of
chronology may lead to the perversion of historical records is shown in
the Book of Daniel in connexion with the familiar account of the capture
of Babylon by Cyrus. Within the past generation records of Cyrus have
been brought to light, as well as records of the conquered Babylonian
king himself, which show that the Hebrew writers of the later day had a
peculiarly befogged impression of a great historical event--their
misconception being shared, it may be added, by the Greek historian
Herodotus. When the annalistic tablet of Cyrus was translated, it was
made to appear, to the consternation of Bible scholars, that the city of
Babylon had capitulated to the Persian--or more properly to the
Elamite--conqueror without a struggle. It appeared, further, that the
king ruling in Babylon at the time of the capitulation was named not
Belshazzar, but Nabonidos. This king, as appears from his own records,
had a son named Belshazzar, who commanded Babylonian armies in outlying
provinces, but who never came to the throne. Nothing could well be more
disconcerting than such a revelation as this. It is held, however, that
the startling discrepancies are not so difficult to explain as may
appear at first sight. The explanation is found, so the Assyriologist
assures us, in the fact that both Hebrew and Greek historians, writing
at a considerable interval after the events, and apparently lacking
authentic sources, confused the peaceful occupation of Babylon by Cyrus
with its siege and capture by a successor to that monarch, Darius
Hystaspes. As to the confusion of Babylonian names--in which, by the
way, the Hebrew and Greek authors do not agree--it is explained that the
general, Belshazzar, was perhaps more directly known in Palestine than
his father the king. But the vagueness of the Hebrew knowledge is
further shown by the fact that Belshazzar, alleged king, is announced as
the son of Nebuchadrezzar (misspelled Nebuchadnezzar in the Hebrew
writings), while the three kings that reigned after Nebuchadrezzar, and
before Nabonidos usurped the throne, are quite overlooked.
Our present concern with the archaeological evidence thus briefly
outlined, and with much more of the kind, may be summed up in the
question: What in general terms is the inference to be drawn by the
world-historian from the Assyrian records in their bearings upon the
Hebrew writings? At first sight this might seem an extremely difficult
question to answer. Indeed, to answer it to the satisfaction of all
concerned might well be pronounced impossible. Yet it would seem as if a
candid and impartial historian could not well be greatly in doubt in the
matter. On the one hand, the general agreement everywhere between the
Hebrew accounts and contemporaneous records from Mesopotamia proves
beyond cavil that, broadly speaking, the Bible accounts are historically
true, and were written by persons who in the main had access to
contemporaneous documents. On the other hand, the discrepancies as to
details, the confusion as to exact chronology, the manifest prejudice
and partizanship, and the obvious limitations of knowledge make it clear
that the writers partook in full measure of the shortcomings of other
historians, and that their work must be adjudged by ordinary historical
standards. As much as this is perhaps conceded by most, if not all,
schools of Bible criticism of to-day. Professor Sayce, one of the most
distinguished of modern Assyriologists, writing as an opponent of the
purely destructive "Higher Criticism," demands no more than that the
Book of Genesis "shall take rank by the side of the other monuments of
the past as the record of events which have actually happened and been
handed on by credible men"; that it shall, in short, be admitted to be
"a collection of ancient documents which have all the value of
contemporaneous testimony," but which being in themselves "wrecks of
vast literatures which extended over the Oriental world from a remote
epoch," cannot be understood aright "except in the light of the
contemporaneous literature of which they form a portion." From the point
of view implied by such words as these, it is only necessary to recall
the mental attitude of our grandfathers to appreciate in some measure
the revolution in thought that has been wrought in this field within the
last half-century, largely through the instrumentality of Oriental
archaeology.
Archaeology and classical history.
We have seen that the general trend of Oriental archaeology has been
reconstructive rather than iconoclastic. Equally true is this of recent
classical archaeology. Here no such revolution has been effected as that
which virtually created anew the history of Oriental antiquity; yet the
bearings of the new knowledge are similar in kind if different in
degree. The world had never quite forgotten the history of the primitive
Greeks as it had forgotten the Mesopotamians, the Himyaritic nations and
the Hittites; but it remembered their deeds only in the form of poetical
myths and traditions. These traditions, finding their clearest
delineation in the lines of Homer, had been subjected to the analysis of
the critical historians of the early decades of the 19th century, and
their authenticity had come to be more than doubted. The philological
analysis of Wolf and his successors had raised doubts as to the very
existence of Homer, and at one time the main current of scholarly
opinion had set strongly in the direction of the belief that the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_ were in reality but latter-day collections of divers
recitals that had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation
to another of bards through ages of illiteracy. It was strenuously
contended that the case could not well be otherwise, inasmuch as the art
of writing must have been quite unknown in Greece until after the
alleged age of the traditional Homer, whose date had been variously
estimated at from 1000 to 800 B.C. by less sceptical generations. It had
come to be a current belief that the _Iliad_ was first committed to
writing in the age of Peisistratus. A prominent controversialist, F.A.
Paley, even went so far as to doubt whether a single written copy of the
_Iliad_ existed in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. The
doubts thus cast upon the age when the Homeric poems first assumed the
fixed form of writing were closely associated with the universal
scepticism as to the historical accuracy of any traditions whatever
regarding the early history of Greece. Cautious historians had come to
regard the so-called "Heroic Age" as a prehistoric period regarding
which nothing definite was known, or in all probability could be known.
It was ably argued by Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in connexion with his
inquiries into early Roman history, that a verbal tradition is not
transmitted from one generation to another in anything like an
authentic form for a longer period than about a century. If, then, the
art of writing was unknown in Greece before, let us say, the 6th century
B.C., it would be useless to expect that any events of Grecian history
prior to about the 7th century B.C. could have been transmitted to
posterity with any degree of historical accuracy.
Notwithstanding the allurements of the subject, such conservative
historians as Grote were disposed to regard the problems of early
Grecian history as inscrutable, and to content themselves with the
recital of traditions without attempting to establish their relationship
with actual facts. It remained for the more robust faith of a Schliemann
to show that such scepticism was all too faint-hearted, by proving that
at such sites as Tiryns, Mycenae and Hissarlik evidences of a very early
period of Greek civilization awaited the spade of the excavator. Thanks
to the enthusiasm of Schliemann and his successors, we can now
substitute for the mythical "Age of Heroes" a historical "Mycenaean Age"
of Greece, and give tangible proof of its relatively high state of
civilization. Schliemann may or may not have been correct in identifying
one of the seven cities that he unearthed at Hissarlik as the fabled
Troy itself, but at least his efforts sufficed to give verisimilitude to
the Homeric story. With the lessons of recent Oriental archaeology in
mind, few will be sceptical enough to doubt that some such contest as
that described in the _Iliad_ actually occurred. And now, thanks to the
efforts of a large company of workers, notably Dr Arthur Evans and his
associates in Cretan exploration, we are coming to speak with some
confidence not merely of a Mycenaean but of a pre-Mycenaean Age.
As yet we see these periods somewhat darkly. The illuminative witness of
written records is in the main denied us here. Some most archaic
inscriptions have been indeed found by the explorers in Crete, but these
for the present serve scarcely any other purpose than to prove the
antiquity of the art of writing among a people who were closely in touch
with the inhabitants of Hellas proper. Most unfortunately for posterity,
the Greeks wrote mainly on perishable materials, and hence the chief
records even of their later civilization have vanished. The only
fragments of Greek manuscripts antedating the Christian era that have
been preserved to us have been found in Egypt, where a hospitable
climate granted them a term of existence not to be hoped for elsewhere.
No fragment of these papyri, indeed, carries us further back than the
age of the Ptolemies; but the Greek inscriptions on the statues of
Rameses II at Abu-Simbel, in Nubia, give conclusive proof that the art
of writing was widely disseminated among the Greeks at least three
centuries before the age of Alexander. This carries us back towards the
traditional age of Homer.
The Cretan inscriptions belong to a far older epoch, and are written in
two non-Grecian scripts of undetermined affinities. Here, then, is
direct evidence that the Aegean peoples of the Mycenaean Age knew how to
write, and it is no longer necessary to assume that the verses of the
_Iliad_ were dependent on mere verbal transmission for any such period
as has been supposed.
But even were direct evidence of the knowledge of the art of writing in
Greece of the early day altogether lacking, none but the hardiest
sceptic could doubt, in the light of recent archaeological discoveries
elsewhere, that the inhabitants of ancient Hellas of the "Homeric Age"
must have shared with their contemporaries the capacity to record their
thought in written words. We have seen that Oriental archaeology has in
recent generations revolutionized our conceptions of the antiquity of
civilization. We have seen that written documents have been preserved in
Mesopotamia to which such a date as 4500 B.C. may be ascribed with a
good deal of confidence; and that from the third millennium B.C. a flood
of contemporary literary records comes to us both from Egypt and
Mesopotamia. But until recently it had been supposed that Hellas was
shut out entirely from this Oriental culture. Historians have found it
hard to dispel the idea that civilization in Greece was a very late
development, and that the culture of the age of Solon sprang, in fact,
suddenly into existence, as it seems to do in the records of the
historian. But the excavations that have given us a knowledge of the
Mycenaean Age have proved conclusively, not alone that civilization
existed in Greece in an early day, but that this civilization was
closely linked with the civilization of Egypt. Not only have antiquities
been found in Crete that point to Egyptian inspiration, but quite
recently Professor Petrie has found at Tel el-Amarna Mycenaean pottery.
The latter find has a peculiar significance, since the date of the Tel
el-Amarna collection is definitely fixed between the years 1400 and 1370
B.C.
It is demonstrated, then, that as early as the beginning of the 14th
century B.C. the Mycenaean civilization was in touch with the ancient
civilization of Egypt. One must not infer from this, however, that the
two civilizations met on anything like an equality. Indeed, in the
wonderful Tel-el-Amarna collection there is a suggestive absence of
literary documents from the Aegean that demands a word of notice. The
Tel el-Amarna collection, it will be recalled, consists of the royal
archives of King Amenophis IV. of the XVIIIth Egyptian dynasty, who in
the latter years of his reign chose to be known as Akhenaton, "the glory
of the solar disk." This monarch had retired from Thebes and established
his court on the site now known as Tel el-Amarna, where he founded the
city which existed only during the brief period of thirty years ending
with the death of the monarch about 1370 B.C. The date of the documents
found in the royal library is, therefore, fixed within very narrow
limits. The documents in question consist chiefly of letters, and
constitute one of the most important of archaeological finds. These
letters came to the king from almost every part of western Asia,
including Palestine and Phoenicia, Babylonia and Asia Minor. Strangely
enough, all the letters are written in the Babylonian character, and
most of them are in the Babylonian language. They afford, therefore,
most striking evidence of a widespread diffusion of Babylonian culture.
Incidentally they prove, to the utter confusion of a certain school of
Bible critics, that the art of writing was familiarly known in Canaan,
and that Egypt and western Asia were in full literary connexion with one
another, long before the time of the Exodus. Hence all the elaborate
arguments based on the supposition that Moses probably could not write
fall to the ground. On the other hand, the absence of letters from
Mycenae among the tablets of Tel el-Amarna must be regarded as at least
suggestive. Seemingly the widespread Babylonian culture had not reached
the Aegean peoples; yet these peoples cannot have been wholly ignorant
of things with which commercial intercourse brought them in contact. The
point is of no very great significance, however, since no one has
pretended that the Western civilization compared with the Eastern in
point of antiquity; and in any event, no amount of negative evidence
weighs a grain in the balance against the positive evidence of the
Cretan inscriptions.
The researches of the archaeologist are, in short, tending to
reconstruct the primitive classical history; and here, as in the Orient,
it is evident that historians of the earlier day were constantly blinded
by a misconception as to the antiquity of civilization. Such a fruitage
as that of Greek culture of the age of Pericles does not come to
maturity without a long period of preparation. Here, as elsewhere, the
laws of evolution hold, permitting no sudden stupendous leaps. But it
required the arduous labours of the archaeologist to prove a proposition
that, once proven, seems self-evident. (H. S. WI.)
_Eras and Periods_.
In the article Calendar (q.v.), that part of chronology is treated which
relates to the measurement of time, and the principal methods are
explained that have been employed, or are still in use, for adjusting
the lunar months of the solar year, as well as the intercalations
necessary for regulating the civil year according to the celestial
motions. But it is necessary to notice here the different _Eras_ and
_Periods_ that have been employed by historians, and by the different
nations of the world, in recording the succession of time and events, to
fix the epochs at which the eras respectively commenced, to ascertain
the form and the initial day of the year made use of, and to establish
their correspondence with the years of the Christian era. These
elements will enable us to convert, by a simple arithmetical operation,
any historical date, of which the chronological characters are given
according to any era whatever, into the corresponding date in the
Christian era.
_Julian Period._--Although the Julian period (the invention of Joseph
Scaliger, in 1582) is not, properly speaking, a chronological era, yet,
on account of its affording considerable facilities in the comparison of
different eras with one another, and in marking without ambiguity the
years before Christ, it is very generally employed by chronologers. It
consists of 7980 Julian years; and the first year of the Christian era
corresponded with the year 4714 of the Julian period.
_Olympiads._--The Olympic games, so famous in Greek history, were
celebrated once every four years, between the new and full moon first
following the summer solstice, on the small plain named Olympia in Elis,
which was bounded on one side by the river Alpheus, on another by the
small tributary stream the Cladeus, and on the other two sides by
mountains. The games lasted five days. Their origin, lost in the dimness
of remote antiquity, was invested by priestly legends with a sacred
character. They were said to have been instituted by the Idaean
Heracles, to commemorate his victory over his four brothers in a
foot-race. According to a tradition, possibly more authentic, they were
re-established by Iphitus, king of Elis, in concert with the Spartan
Lycurgus and Cleosthenes of Pisa. The practice was long afterwards
adopted of designating the Olympiad, or period of four years, by the
name of the victor in the contests of the stadium, and of inscribing his
name in the gymnasium of Olympia. The first who received this honour was
Coroebus. The games in which Coroebus was victor, and which form the
principal epoch of Greek history, were celebrated about the time of the
summer solstice 776 years before the common era of the Incarnation, in
the 3938th year of the Julian period, and twenty-three years, according
to the account of Varro, before the foundation of Rome.
Before the introduction of the Metonic cycle, the Olympic year began
sometimes with the full moon which followed, at other times with that
which preceded the summer solstice, because the year sometimes contained
384 days instead of 354. But subsequently to its adoption, the year
always commenced with the eleventh day of the moon which followed the
solstice. In order to avoid troublesome computations, which it would be
necessary to recommence for every year, and of which the results differ
only by a few days, chronologers generally regard the 1st of July as the
commencement of the Olympic year. Some authors, however, among whom are
Eusebius, Jerome and the historian Socrates, place its commencement at
the 1st of September; these, however, appear to have confounded the
Olympic year with the civil year of the Greeks, or the era of the
Seleucidae.
It is material to observe, that as the Olympic years and periods begin
with the 1st of July, the first six months of a year of our era
correspond to one Olympic year, and the last six months to another.
Thus, when it is said that the first year of the Incarnation
corresponds to the first of the 195th Olympiad, we are to understand
that it is only with respect to the last six months of that year that
the correspondence takes place. The first six months belonged to the
fourth year of the 194th Olympiad. In referring dates expressed by
Olympiads to our era, or the contrary, we must therefore distinguish
two cases.
_1st._ When the event in question happened between the 1st of January
and the 1st of the following July, the sum of the Olympic year and of
the year before Christ is always equal to 776. The year of the era,
therefore, will be found by subtracting the number of the Olympic year
from 776. For example, Varro refers the foundation of Rome to the 21st
of April of the third year of the sixth Olympiad, and it is required
to find the year before our era. Since five Olympic periods have
elapsed, the third year of the sixth Olympiad is 5 X 4 + 3 = 23;
therefore, subtracting 23 from 776, we have 753, which is the year
before Christ to which the foundation of Rome is referred by Varro.
_2nd._ When the event took place between the summer solstice and the
1st of January following, the sum of the Olympic year and of the year
before Christ is equal to 777. The difference, therefore, between 777
and the year in one of the dates will give the year in the other date.
Thus, the moon was eclipsed on the 27th of August, a little before
midnight, in the year 413 before our era; and it is required to find
the corresponding year in the Olympic era. Subtract 413 from 777, the
remainder is 364; and 364 divided by four gives 91 without a
remainder; consequently the eclipse happened in the fourth year of the
ninety-first Olympiad, which is the date to which it is referred by
Thucydides.
If the year is after Christ, and the event took place in one of the
first six months of the Olympic year, that is to say, between July and
January, we must subtract 776 from the number of the Olympic year to
find the corresponding year of our era; but if it took place in one of
the last six months of the Olympic year, or between January and July,
we must deduct 777. The computation by Olympiads seldom occurs in
historical records after the middle of the 5th century of our era.
The names of the months were different in the different Grecian
states. The Attic months, of which we possess the most certain
knowledge, were named as follows:--
Hecatombaeon. Gamelion.
Metageitnion. Anthesterion.
Boëdromion. Elaphebolion.
Pyanepsion. Munychion.
Maemacterion. Thargelion.
Poseideon. Scirophorion.