Chapter X · (continued 2)

Lipsius and other antiquaries. 59. The works of Lipsius are full of accessions to our knowledge of Roman antiquity, and he may be said to have stood as conspicuous on this side of the Alps as Sigonius in Italy. His treatise on the amphitheatre, 1584, completed what Panvinius, De Ludis Circensibus, had begun. A later work, by Peter Fabre, president in the parliament of Toulouse, entitled Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletica, 1592, relates to the games of Greece as well as Rome, and has been highly praised by Gronovius. It will be found in the eighth volume of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Græcarum. Several antiquaries traced the history of Roman families and names; such as Fulvius Ursinus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Pighius, Castalio, Golzius.[979] A Spaniard of immense erudition, Petrus Ciaconius (Chacon), besides many illustrations of ancient monuments of antiquities, especially the rostral column of Duilius, has left a valuable treatise, De Triclinio Romano, 1588.[980] He is not to be confounded with Alfonsus Ciaconius, a native also of Spain, but not of the same family, who wrote an account of the column of Trajan. Pancirollus, in his Notitia Dignitatum, or rather his commentary on a public document of the age of Constantine so entitled, threw light on that later period of imperial Rome.

Saville on Roman militia. 60. The first contribution that England made to ancient literature in this line was the View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries concerning Roman Warfare, by Sir Henry Saville, in 1598. This was translated into Latin, and printed at Heidelberg, as early as 1601. It contains much information in small compass, extending only to about 130 duodecimo pages. Nor is it borrowed, as far as I could perceive, from Patrizzi or Lipsius, but displays an independent and extensive erudition.

61. It would encumber the reader’s memory were these pages to become a register of books. Both in this and the succeeding periods we can only select such as appear, by the permanence, or, at least, the immediate lustre of their reputation, to have deserved of the great republic of letters better than the rest. And in such a selection it is to be expected that the grounds of preference or of exclusion will occasionally not be obvious to all readers, and possibly would not be deemed, on reconsideration, conclusive to the author. In names of the second or third class there is often but a shadow of distinction.

Numismatics. 62. The foundations were laid, soon after the middle of the century, of an extensive and interesting science—that of ancient medals. Collections of these had been made from the time of Cosmo de Medici, and perhaps still earlier; but the rules of arranging, comparing, and explaining them were as yet unknown, and could be derived only from close observation, directed by a profound erudition. Eneas Vico of Venice, in 1555, published Discorsi sopra le Medaglie degl’Antichi; in which he justly boasts, says Tiraboschi, that he was the first to write in Italian on such a subject; but he might have added that no one had yet written upon it in any language.[981] The learning of Vico was the more remarkable that he was by profession an engraver. He afterwards published a series of imperial medals, and another of the empresses; adding to each a life of the person and explanation of the reverse. But in the latter he was excelled by Sebastian Erizzo, a noble Venetian, who four years after Vico published a work with nearly the same title. This is more fully comprehensive than that of Vico: medallic science was reduced in it to fixed principles, and it is particularly esteemed for the erudition shown by the author in explaining the reverses.[982] Both Vico and Erizzo have been sometimes mistaken; but what science is perfect in its commencement? It has been observed that the latter, living at the same time in the same city, and engaged in the same pursuit, makes no mention of his precursor; a consequence, no doubt, of the jealous humour so apt to prevail with the professors of science, especially when they do not agree in their opinions. This was the case here; Vico having thought ancient coins and medals identical, while Erizzo made a distinction between them, in which modern critics in numismatic learning have generally thought him in the wrong. The medallic collections, published by Hubert Golzius, a Flemish engraver, who had examined most of the private cabinets in Europe, from 1557 to 1579, acquired great reputation, and were long reckoned the principal repertory of that science. But it seems that suspicions entertained by many of the learned have been confirmed, and that Golzius has published a great number of spurious and even of imaginary medals; his own good faith being also much implicated in these forgeries.[983]

Mythology. 63. The ancient mythology is too closely connected with all classical literature to have been neglected so long as numismatic antiquity. The compilations of Rhodiginus and Ab Alexandro, besides several other works, and indeed all annotations on Greek and Latin authors, had illustrated it. But this was not done systematically; and no subject more demands a comparison of authorities, which will not always be found consistent or intelligible. Boccaccio had long before led the way, in his Genealogiæ Deorum; but the erudition of the fourteenth century could clear away but little of the cloud that still in some measure hangs over the religion of the ancient world. In the first decade of the present period we find a work of considerable merit for the times, by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent scholars of that age, entitled Historia de Diis Gentium. It had been preceded by one of inferior reputation, the Mythologia of Natalis Comes. Giraldi, says the Biographie Universelle, is the first who has treated properly this subject, so difficult on account of its extent and complexity. He made use not only of all Greek and Latin authors, but of ancient inscriptions, which he has explained with much sagacity. Sometimes the multiplicity of his quotations renders him obscure, and sometimes he fails in accuracy, through want of knowing what has since been brought to light. But the Historia de Diis Gentium is still consulted.

Scaliger’s Chronology. 64. We can place in no other chapter but the present a work, than which none published within this century is superior, and perhaps none is equal in originality, depth of erudition and vigorous encountering of difficulty, that of Joseph Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum. The first edition of this appeared in 1583; the second, which is much enlarged and amended, in 1598; and a third, still better, in 1609. Chronology, as a science, was hitherto very much unknown; all ancient history, indeed, had been written in a servile and uncritical spirit, copying dates, as it did everything else, from the authorities immediately under the compiler’s eye, with little or no endeavour to reconcile discrepancies, or to point out any principles of computation. Scaliger perceived that it would be necessary to investigate the astronomical schemes of ancient calendars, not always very clearly explained by the Greek and Roman writers, and requiring much attention and acuteness, besides a multifarious erudition, oriental as well as classical, of which he alone in Europe could be reckoned master. This work, De Emendatione Temporum, is in the first edition divided into eight books. The first relates to the lesser equal year, as he denominates it, or that of 360 days, adopted by some eastern nations, and founded, as he supposes, on the natural lunar year, before the exact period of a lunation was fully understood; the second book is on the true lunar year and some other divisions connected with it; the third on the greater equal year, or that of 365 days; and the fourth on the more accurate schemes of the solar period. In the fifth and sixth books he comes to particular epochs, determining in both many important dates in profane and sacred history. The seventh and eighth discuss the modes of computation, and the terminal epochs used in different nations, with miscellaneous remarks and critical emendations of his own. In later editions these two books are thrown into one. The great intricacy of many of these questions, which cannot be solved by testimonies, often imperfect and inconsistent, without much felicity of conjecture, serves to display the surprising vigour of Scaliger’s mind, who grapples like a giant with every difficulty. Le Clerc has censured him for introducing so many conjectures, and drawing so many inferences from them, that great part of his chronology is rendered highly suspicious.[984] But, whatever may be his merit in the determination of particular dates, he is certainly the first who laid the foundations of the science. He justly calls it Materia intacta et a nobis nunc primum tentata. Scaliger in all this work is very clear, concise, and pertinent, and seems to manifest much knowledge of physical astronomy, though he was not a good mathematician, and did little credit to his impartiality, by absolutely rejecting the Gregorian calendar.

Julian period. 65. The chronology of Scaliger has become more celebrated through his invention of the Julian period; a name given, in honour of his father, to a cycle of 7980 years, beginning 4713 before Christ, and consequently before the usual date of the creation of the world. He was very proud of this device; it is impossible to describe, he says, its utility; chronologers and astronomers cannot extol it too much. And what is more remarkable, it was adopted for many years afterwards, even by the opponents of Scaliger’s chronology, and is almost as much in favour with Petavius as with the inventor.[985] This Julian period is formed by multiplying together the years of three cycles once much in use—the solar of twenty-eight, according to the old calendar, the lunar or Metonic of nineteen, and the indiction, an arbitrary and political division, introduced about the time of Constantine, and common both in the church and empire, consisting of fifteen years. Yet I confess myself unable to perceive the great advantage of this scheme. It affords, of course, a fixed terminus, from which all dates may be reckoned in progressive numbers, better than the æra of the creation, on account of the uncertainty attending that epoch; but the present method of reckoning them in a retrograde series from the birth of Christ, which seems never to have occurred to Scaliger or Petavius, is not found to have much practical inconvenience. In other respects, the only real use that the Julian period appears to possess is, that dividing any year in it by the numbers 28, 19, or 15, the remainder above the quotient will give us the place such year holds in the cycle, by the proper number of which it has been divided. Thus, if we desire to know what place in the Metonic cycle the year of the Julian period 6402, answering to the year of our Lord 1689, held, or in other words, what was the Golden Number, as it was called, of that year, we must divide 6402 by 19, and we shall find in the quotient a remainder 18; whence we perceive that it was the eighteenth year of a lunar or Metonic cycle. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which has greatly protracted the solar cycle by the suppression of one bissextile year in a century, as well as the virtual abandonment of the indiction, and even of the solar and lunar cycles, as divisions of time, have greatly diminished whatever utility this invention may have originally possessed.