On the+Dating of Ancient History. 65 but a Gothic reckoning, and did not exist in Spain before it was possessed by the Goths : and era is only the word year. Be this as it may, it was employed very extensively and most usefully in Spain and the South of France for many centuries, beginning so far as we know with the .6th A. D., both for current and literary dating ; and Isidore, who dated by it a chronicle, and published besides an elaborate book of Origines or Etymologies, explained the word ' sera' to be Latin, meaning taxing, and deduced the epoch from some great survey and change of arrangement at the time of its commencement : whether this was the introduc- tion of the Julian reckoning or not we cannot say. Nearly simultaneous with the general establishment of the Roman dominion occurred the great event of the history of our globe, the origin of Christianity. This had a tendency to cause new systems of dating in three ways. The first was owing to the general interest which through it began to be taken in the chronology and history of the Hebrew Scriptures, which had now flowed, by means of the Septuagint, into the general current of Greek literature 38 . The far reach backward and elaborate chronological detail of the Hebrew history both made a great impression on men's imaginations, and also were of singular value to the Christians in their general line of argument then against Paganism, in which they en- deavoured to shew that all that there was excellent in the Greek philosophy, which their opponents set against the Scriptures, had flowed in some way or other from the writers of the Scrip- Moorish occupation iooo years before reckoning is to be supposed a Gothic the modern one, and that we have no one, it is almost worth considering wher reason to suppose the languages to have ther it may not be a mistaken date from been radically different. The era or the beginning of Christianity, or the reckoning might have been either a date Incarnation, and the taxing mean the of Carthage itself or a date of the con- famous survey with which that is asso- quest by it, and of the organization and ciated. Some reckonings of the birth settling of tribute then: such a reckoning of Christ carried it nearly as far back, might easily change, at a reorganization No satisfactory Gothic reason can be and new settlement under Augustus, given for it. into a dynastial dating bearing the 38 This interest was not connected same general ^ me . Isidore may have in its origin with Christianity, though been right as to the Word meaning set- Christianity greatly increased it. Jose- tlement or taxation, though wrong in phus led the way which Julius Afrjca- the way he made it mean so. If the nus, Eusebius, and others, followed. Vol. I. March, 1854. 5
