(4) Length of Years and Time of Begin ning. To us it seems natural to fix the length of the year by the seasons, which recur with a sort of regularity, but which shade one into an other so that no definite line of demarcation be tween them can be drawn, except by astrono mers. Our system involves a great series of previous observAions, and a study of astronomy that could be perfected only with modern instru ments. Simple as it seems to us, it is complex to simple minds; and few of the educated carry its facts and reasons in their minds. It was easier in old times to let the priests arrange the sacred days upon which the year depended, and to let them put in or leave out a few days to accord with the seasons. Indeed, it was this priestly func tion that enabled Julius Czesar. as Pontifex Max imus in charge of such matters, to establish the system which lasted in Europe 1.627 years and is still maintained in Russia : yet philosophic Cicero made a jest of it. We find a great variety in the length of the year in various countries and times, and in the season chosen for the beginning of the year.
As it is much easier to observe the moon than the sun, it was natural to measure off years by Inflations. People of little culture would soon find that the counting of twelve new moons brought them to about the same season, with a year of 354 days, and months alternately twenty-nine and thirty days long. Then their priests must deter mine whether they will follow the moon, putting in a day now and then upon a chosen month, since the Inflations are not exactly twenty-nine and a half days long. The Arabian or Mohammedan years adhere to the lunations. so that in the course of 897 years their new year's day fell upon every day of the Julian calendar: upon most of them re peatedly.
But many nations observed festivals depend ent upon the seasons as a festival welcoming the spring; or one of thanksgiving after harvest. If such were set upon some particular day of the year or month, the new year's day must not be al lowed to wander far, and the priestly order must keep the length of the year on an average near 365 days by lengthening the months or by adding days. Most of the ancient nations adopted this plan. But there was a great variety in the time of beginning the year. The Romans began the year in March, as the season of planting, vaguely sug gested by the equinoxes; and the Hebrews had the same beginning, marked by their great relig ious festival, the Passover. Several other nations had the same, which seems one of the points sug gested by nature itself. But the later Jews adopt ed a civil calendar which has now superseded the other, so that they celebrate the opening of their new year in the autumn; and what was formerly their seventh month is now the first. This brings
their new year's day near the autumnal equinox, another time suggested by nature, when the labor of cultivation is done and the grains and most of the fruits are harvested. The French scientists chose the autumnal equinox as the point for begin ning their new era of t792, when they hoped to bring mankind to reckon from the fruition of their great Revolution.
Cxsar fixed the beginning of the year now used in all Europe and in lands colonized by Europeans near midwinter. On the other hand the Olympic years began at midsummer. Now to illustrate confusion arising from these various beginnings of a year, suppose we learn that an event occurred in the first year of the 94th Olympiad. By cur calendar that Olympic year began in July of B. C. 404, and ended in July B. C. 403. Hence if no circumstances show in what season of the year the event occurred, the historian cannot say in which of the two years he must place it. De Quincey shows that at a certain period of English history, owing to the use of January t and of March 25 for New Year's Day and to the intro duction of New Style, an error of two years might occur. (De Quincey's I forks, Essay on Pope.) (5) Conflict of Authorities furnishes as great a difficulty as the indifference and the looseness of enumeration discussed above. Sometimes the con flict is in the text of an author, by the occurrence of irreconcilable statements. Thus in 2 Chron. XXI :20, we are told that King Jchoram was thirty-two years of age at accession, and died after a reign of eight years, at the age of forty. The next chapter tells us (verse 2) that his youngest son Ahaziah succeeded linn, being forty-two years old at accession, so that he must have been burn two years before his father, and other sons were born earlier, or else there was a long unrecognized interregnum. or a mistake has occurred. Here we have a parallel passage in 2 Kings viii :26, which says twenty-two instead of forty-two, making it probable that a "mem" was erroneously written for a "kaph," a figure 4 for 2. Rut the I.XX says, at least in the best MSS.. twenty, and neither twenty-two nor forty-two.
But discrepancies and conflicts are not always so easily dealt with, as will appear below. Au thors of equal credibility sometimes differ widely: and the chronologer who follows one rather than another proceeds often by a judgment for which he may not be able to give a definite reason. The students of history, whether that of the hullo or of other books, must expect to find men of the great est learning and keenest research unable to agree upon dates: and he must learn to respect them none the less, and to avail himself of their labors thankfully, leaving riddles of time undecided.