~ 8 ~
still think in this way, and I am far from wishing to speak contemptuously of them. But I cannot hold such a view myself, and my arguments are addressed to those who share my feelings.
I have felt it necessary to say something about these preliminary points, but I wish to make a very strong distinction between them and what follows. In the following sections I give for the most part the results of my own investigations or, perhaps I should say, of what I have verified. In what has just been said about the evidence or want of evidence for a primitive and widely diffused continuous week, I have necessarily had to retail at second-hand what I have gathered from modern writers, whose value and accuracy I have no means of judging—only oriental scholars can appraise them with any authority. But I am not disturbed by this; for even if later discoveries should shew that the week, whether in the planetary or any other form, was a primitive and general institution in the East, it would not affect my main purpose, which is to shew how the double conception involved in the Jewish and the planetary week took root in the Roman Empire and produced the institution under which we live. When the Graeco-Roman world adopted the seven-day week, it was not
day of the Sun' (Codex Justiniani, III, 12, 2): while an inscription from the Danube lands credits the same Emperor with a relaxation of this, so far as to permit 'nundinae' to be held on the Sun's day. (Corp. Inscr. Lat. III, 4121.)
