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the primitiveness and universality of the week is largely a survival from the idea, under which I was myself brought up, that paganism was a corruption of revealed truth. Just as the various legends of the Deluge were distortions of the authentic story of Noah, so it was with the week. God had created the world in six days and rested on the seventh; and the descendants of Adam had dimly remembered this, though they cortupted it to idolatrous uses. Thus we used to be told that the Anglo-Saxons gave the names of their own deities to the days of the week. No one asked how they came to have week-days to name, for the week had been from the beginning. Conversely the supposed antiquity and universality of the week was used to confirm the Mosaic record[1]. Probably there are many who
- ↑ A good instance of this may be found in the article on 'Calendar' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an article which has been reproduced from the 9th into the 11th edition unchanged. The writers tell us that 'although it was not introduced at Rome till after the reign of Theodosius, it had been employed from time immemorial in almost all Eastern countries; and as it forms neither an aliquot part of the year nor of the lunar month, those who reject the Mosaic recital will be at a loss, as Delambre remarks, to assign to it an origin having much semblance of probability.'
As I have seen the statement about Roman use reproduced elsewhere, I may add that I know of no foundation for dating the official introduction of the week at Rome so late as 'Theodosius' death (A.D. 395). There is a well-known decree of Constantine (321) forbidding legal and commercial business, though permitting necessary field labour, 'on the venerable
