FullReads

Upon the whole, the teacher will make the following remarks to her pupils, after having read what precedes; remarks partly upon the new mode of delivering chronology, and partly upon the things delivered:

I. She will notice it–as some improvement–that the three great leading events, which compose the opening of history not fabulous, are here, for the first time, placed under the eye in their true relations of time, viz., as about contemporary. For without again touching on the question–do they, or do they not, vary from each other in point of time by twenty-three and by thirty years–it will be admitted by everybody that, at any rate, the three events stand equally upon the frontier line of authentic history. A frontier or debateable land is always of some breadth. They form its inauguration. And they would do so even if divided by a much wider interval. Now, it is very possible to know of A, B, and C, separately, that each happened in such a year, say 1800; and yet never to have noticed them consciously as contemporary. We read of many a man (L, M, N, suppose), that he was born in 1564, or that he died in 1616. And we may happen separately to know that these were the years in which Shakespeare was born and died. Yet, for all that, we may never happen consciously to notice with respect to any one of the men, L, M, N, that he was a contemporary of Shakespeare’s. Now, this was the case with regard to the three great events, Greek, Roman, and Assyrian. No chronologer failed to observe of each in its separate place that it occurred somewhere about 750 years B.C. But every chronologer had failed to notice this coincident time of each as coincident. And, accordingly, all failed to converge these three events into one focus as the solemn and formal opening of history. It is good to have a beginning, a starting post, from which to date all possible historical events that are worthy to be regarded as such. But it is better still to find that by the rarest of accidents, by a good luck that could never have been looked for, the three separate starting posts–which historical truth obliges us to assume for the three great fields of history, Roman, Grecian, and Asiatic[18]–all closely coincide in point of time; or, to use the Greek technical term, all closely synchronize.

II. With respect to Greece and the Olympiad in particular, she will inform her pupil that the Olympic games, celebrated near the town of Olympia, recurred every fifth year; that is to say, there was a clear interval of four years between each revolution of the games. Each Olympiad, therefore, containing four years, it is usual in citing the particular Olympiad in which an event happened, to cite also the year, should that be known, or, being known, should that be of importance. Thus Olymp. CX. 3 would mean that such a thing, say X, occurred in the third year of the 110th Olympiad; that is, four times 110 will be 440; and this, deducted from 777 (the era of the Olympiads), leaves 337 years B.C. as the era when X occurred. Only that, upon reviewing the case, we find that the 110th Olympiad was not absolutely completed, not by one year; which, subtracted from the 337, leaves 336 B.C. as the true date. If her pupil should say, ‘But were there no great events in Greece before the Olympiads?’ the teacher will answer, ‘Yes, a few, but not many of a rank sufficient to be called Grecian.’ They are merely local events; events of Thessaly, suppose; events of Argos; but much too obscure, both as to the facts, as to the meaning of the facts, and as to the dates, to be worth any student’s serious attention. There were, however, three events worthy to be called Grecian; partly because they interested more States than one of Greece; and partly because they have since occupied the Athenian stage, and received a sort of consecration from the great masters of Grecian tragedy. These three events were the fatal story of the house of Oedipus; a story stretching through three generations; and in which the war against the Seven Gates of Thebes was but an episode. Secondly, the Argonautic expedition (voyage of the ship Argo, and of the sailors in that ship, i.e., the Argonauts), which is consecrated as the first voyage of any extent undertaken by Greeks. Both these events are as full of heroic marvels, and of supernatural marvels, as the legends of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Fairy Morgana. Later than these absolute romances comes the semi-romance of the Iliad, or expedition against Troy. This, the most famous of all Pagan romances, we know by two separate criteria to be later in date than either of the two others; first, because the actors in the Iliad are the descendants of those who figured as actors in the others; secondly, from the subdued tone of the romantic[19] which prevails throughout the Iliad. Now, with respect to these three events in Grecian history, anterior to the Olympiads, which are all that a young student ought to notice, it is sufficient if generally she is made aware of the order in which they stand to each other, or, at least, that the Iliad comes last in the series, and if as to this last and greatest of the series, she fixes its era precisely to one thousand years before Christ. Chronologers, indeed, sometimes bring it down to something lower. But one millennium, the clear unembarrassed cyphers of 1,000, whether in counting guineas or years, is a far simpler and a far more rememberable era than any qualifications of this round number; which qualifications, let it not for a moment be forgotten, are not at all better warranted than the simpler expression. One only amongst all chronologers has anything to stand upon that is not as unsubstantial as a cloud; and this is Sir Isaac Newton. And the way in which he proceeded it may be well to explain, in order that the young pupil may see what sort of evidences we have prior to the Olympiads for any chronological fact. Sir Isaac endeavoured by calculating backwards to ascertain the exact time of some celestial phenomenon–as, suppose, an eclipse of the sun, or such and such positions of the heavenly bodies with regard to each other. This phenomenon, whatever it were, call X. Then if (upon looking into the Argonautic Expedition or any other romance of those elder times) he finds X actually noticed as co-existing with any part of the adventures, in that case he has fixed by absolute observation, as it were, what we may call the latitude and longitude of that one historical event; and then using this, as we use our modern meridian of Greenwich, as a point of starting, he can deduce the distances of all subsequent events by tracing them through the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of the several actors concerned. The great question which will then remain to be settled is, how many years to allow for a generation; and, secondly, in monarchies, how much to allow for a reign, since often two successive reigns will not be two successive generations, because whilst the two reigns are distinct quantities, the two lives are coincident through a great part of their duration. Now, of course, Sir Isaac is very often open to serious criticism, or to overpowering doubts. That is inevitable. But on the whole he treads upon something like a firm footing. Others, as regards that era, tread upon mere clouds, and their authority goes for nothing at all.