On the Dating of Ancient History. 69 of our Lord : and hence he has always been called the originator of our way of dating, though it does not appear that he con- templated any literary or historical use of it. The real difficulty of choosing a fixed point to date from in times in any degree early or distant lies in this, that it is neces- sary in order to its adoption, that it should be a point of general interest, and therefore probably of historical importance : and if it is this, so as to be worth historical accuracy about, its own date is likely to be very much disputed. In this lay the ad- vantage of Timaeus's choosing as he did, namely, that no great historical event was concerned with the first Olympiad ; and the disadvantage of Dionysius's, that the event which he chose as his epoch is one the exact time of which, within a limited period of years, was in his time and has been since itself much disputed. It was this which was for a long time the great hindrance to the adoption of the Dionysian epoch in the more central parts of Christendom, even after it had, as we shall see, come into con- siderable use in the remote parts, where the new and therefore less critical and careful society was more predominant. Scaliger, at what we may call the revival of chronology, expresses indig- nation at Dionysius, and wishes to change the whole system even of modern reckoning 44 . This epochal realism 45 is surely most unreasonable. An epoch for dating is a fixed point of time, associated with some event of general interest, from which it takes its name and which makes it known and gives it currency : but the fixing of the epoch and the finding it depends upon the use of it, and not the least upon the event which first suggested it and which remains merely as a name. The signature A. D. means now so many years and 44 I should myself be disposed to sissent." At present the birth of Christ rank Dionysius, in so far as it is to be is usually understood to have taken, considered he who through various acci- place 4 years, by Ideler 6, before our dents and chances, has supplied us at epoch. But the shaking loose of the last with an almost universally recog- fact from the conventional epoch is the nized epoch, as one of the greatest bene- best way to the determination of the factors which the human race and its truth about the fact, if we are anxious history have had. Scaliger looks upon for that. him as an arch-deceiver : " pessime de 45 The best way to satisfy it would posteritate meritus est, cui persuaserit be to consider the signature A. D. to re- annos Christi uno minus putare, quam present, as perhaps it does, Anno Dio- omnes, qui ante eum scripserant, sen- nysiano instead of Anno Domini.
