APPENDIX OF DISSERTATIONS. ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE ROMAN EMPERORS.
(Cf. n. 57, on the book *De Mensuris*, col. 258.)A "Then the Emperors of the Romans." The list of Roman emperors which follows is more corrected than the other one which he published in the *Ancoratus*, no. 60; yet it is not sufficiently accurate in every respect. Wherefore we believe we shall be doing a useful work if we inquire more diligently into the individual years of the emperors, which indeed contain some matter for question. For this seems necessary both for illustrating Epiphanius and for establishing Roman history; especially since there are very many things in them that merit greater trust and study from chronologists.
"Augustus, 56 years." Concerning the years in which Augustus reigned, there has been very full discussion at *Haer.* 51. He enumerated only sixty-six here; beyond which Eusebius adds six months. The beginning is from the year of the City 711, that is, the next year after the murder of Julius. For Josephus, who reckoned from the very year of the Julian murder, gives Augustus 57 years, 6 months, 11 days.
"Of whom in the fortieth." In the 41st year of Caesar Augustus, Epiphanius, with Eusebius, believes Christ to have been brought into the light, of the Julian period 4712, the 44th year of the Julian [count], nearly two years before the common birth of Christ. For he reckons Him born on the 6th of January. On which [see] at *Haer.* 51.
"Tiberius, 23 years." Eusebius assigns 23 solid years to Tiberius, and our author follows him: not without error. I would say that here, and in Augustus, they sought a round number, were it not that in many other cases they had added months and days; which, therefore, ought not to have been omitted in the case of Tiberius. Augustus died in the consulship of the two Sexti, in the Dionysian year 14, of the Julian period 4727, on the 14th of the Kalends of September, as Suetonius says. But Tiberius died on the 16th of the Kalends of April, in the consulship of Cn. Acerronius Proculus and C. Pontius, in the Dionysian year 37, of the Julian period 4750. The interval is 22 years, 209 days, which is almost 7 months. That is the time of the Tiberian empire. Nor does Dio rightly write that he reigned more than 22 years, 6 months, and as many days. For 209 days, with those B current months and days, can be equaled neither in the Julian form, nor in the lunar, nor in the Egyptian.
"Claudius, 13 years." And yet Eusebius, besides 13 years, adds 9 months, 28 days. Dio assigns 13 years, 6 months, 20 days. Claudius died, as Suetonius is the authority, in the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, on the Ides of October. From the 8th of the Kalends of February of the 41st Dionysian year, when Claudius began his reign, to the 13th of October of the year 54, into which the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Aviola falls, the full years intervening are 12, with 262 days, or 8 Julian months and 20 days: which Dio correctly totals.
"Nero, 13 years." Eusebius attributes 13 years, 6 months, 28 days to Nero; Dio, 13 years, 8 months. The beginning of Nero is the 14th of October of the Dionysian year 54; from which, if thirteen years and eight months are reckoned, they end in approximately the 13th of June of the Dionysian year 68.
C "Caius, 3 years." Eusebius attributes three years to him, with 10 months; Dio, 2 years, 9 months, 28 days; Suetonius, 10 months, 6 days. From the 16th of the Kalends of April, when he began his reign, in the 36th Dionysian year, to the 10th of the Kalends of February of the 41st year, when Caius was killed, the years are 2 solid, with 314 days: or 10 Julian months with 8 days.
"Galba, 7 months." In the *Ancoratus*, he expunged three from the number of emperors, surely not deservedly. The first of whom, Galba, was slaughtered in the seventh month of his reign, as Suetonius and Eusebius report. Dio grants him 9 months and 10 days. Otho died on the 95th day of his reign, on the authority of Suetonius; or, as Dio [says], 90. Vitellius reigned for one year, ten days excepted, says Dio. From the death of Nero, there are gathered two years and five days: which end in the year of Christ 70, approximately the 18th of June. But Vitellius had already long died. It is therefore false that Galba and Vitellius reigned for so long. Suetonius says Vitellius was born in the consulship of Drusus and Norbanus, on the 7th or 24th of September. That is the year of the Julian form 60, of Christ 15. He perished in the 57th year of his age; which also Tacitus confirms. If this is true, his 57th year began in the Julian 116, [the year of] his Christ 72. But the beginning of Vespasian falls in Christ 69, Julian 114, as will be said a little later. Consequently, the history of Dio is truer, who writes that Vitellius died in the 54th year of his age. For in this way his death falls into the year of Christ 69, Julian 114. But the beginnings as well as the endings of those three emperors are very obscure, concerning which it will be treated more clearly elsewhere.
"Vespasian, 9 years." Eusebius, besides just that many years, attributes 11 months and 22 days; nor is Dio far off, who writes that he reigned 10 years, less 6 days. Suetonius reports Vespasian to have been born on the 15th of the Kalends of December, in the consulship of Q. Sulpitius Camerinus and C. Poppaeus Sabinus, five years before...
Augustus departed. This is the ninth year of the Dionysian era. He adds that he lived sixty-nine years, seven months, and seven days. These, calculated from the 17th day of November of the ninth year, end on the 9th of the Kalends of July—or the 23rd of June—the day on which he is said by the A same author to have passed away, in the year of Christ 79, and the 124th of the Julian era. Therefore, Vespasian died in the year of Christ 79. Now, since his first day of empire began to be counted from the Kalends of July, according to the same author, Suetonius, and he completed ten years, with the exception of a few days; if the eleventh year was to begin from the Kalends of July in the year of Christ 79, then the first year of Vespasian began in the year of Christ 69, the 114th of the Julian era, a year and several days after the death of Nero. But Vitellius spent several months after the beginning of Vespasian's reign.
*Titus, two years.* He reigned for two years and two months, and twenty days besides; for he died on the Ides of September, that is, the 13th day of the month; to which the seven remaining days of June of the year 79 being added, they make up twenty days over and above the two years and two months. He died, therefore, in the year of Christ 81, the 126th Julian year. From this the beginning of Domitian takes its rise. However, Eutropius, who calculates eight months and twenty days over the two years, must be corrected.
*Domitian, fifteen years.* This is erroneous, as in Eusebius, regarding the months, for which one should write "five days." For he reigned fifteen years and five days, says Dio. Suetonius and Eutropius narrate that he died in the fifteenth year of his reign. From the 14th of September, the day after Titus had departed, to the 14th of the Kalends of October—that is, to the 18th of September, the day on which Domitian was killed—there are six days, excluding the day of his death. It is necessary that it run over by just so many days beyond the solid years, not by more months or days. But Scaliger, in book V of *De emendatione temporum*, contrary to the common opinion of all, thinks that Domitian reigned only fourteen years and five days, and judges those who decide otherwise to be less than prudent. But he himself acts with little prudence indeed. For it cannot be denied that Domitian completed fifteen years and tasted a few days of the sixteenth; or even by Scaliger's own authority. For he was killed in the consulship of C. Valens and Antistius Vetus, by the testimony of Eutropius and Xiphilinus, as D even Scaliger asserts in his notes on Eusebius. The consulship of these men falls in the year of the City, by Varronian calculation, 849, of the Julian period 4809, of Christ 96, the 141st Julian year, in the cycle of the moon 11. From the year of Christ 81, and the 14th day of September, to the 18th of September of the year 96, there are fifteen years and five days.
Moreover, Scaliger errs when, on page 476, he accuses Josephus, who at the end of his *Antiquities* says he was born in the first year of Gaius; and that he completed his work in the twelfth year of Domitian, at the age of fifty-six. But he himself thinks that Josephus stated one year too few, and that he ought to have counted fifty-seven years. In this he is mistaken. For Gaius began his reign in the year of Christ 37, on the 24th of January; but the thirteenth year of Domitian began in the year of Christ 93, from the 14th day of September. Let us imagine Josephus to have been born in that same year of Christ 37, in the month of December, or A in the year 38, beginning in January, when Gaius was still in his first year, and his own 56th year would begin from the month of December of the year 92, after the beginning of the 13th year of Domitian. Wherefore, that he finished his writing in the month of October of the year 93, it happened in the 56th year of his life, and the 13th of Domitian. Let Scaliger go now with that epiphonema of his: *Thus, by daily endangering the reliability of our method, we detect the errors of others.*
B *At this time.* Epiphanius spoke very narrowly when he said that the destruction of Jerusalem happened in the time of Titus. Which can be excused in some way, if he meant it broadly, at this time—that is, under these emperors—that it happened, namely, under Vespasian; for it was in the second year of Vespasian that Jerusalem was ravaged by Titus, as among others Josephus clearly affirms in book VI, chapter 27. The other part, which follows, excludes all excuse: namely, that that disaster happened after the year of the Passion of the Lord 65, with several days added. But Eusebius in his *Chronicle* says that forty years had elapsed from the fifteenth year of Tiberius and the beginning of the evangelical preaching; though in book II of his *History*, chapter 7, he speaks of exactly forty years from the Passion of the Lord. Scaliger in his *Eusebian Annotations* interpolated this passage in vain; and after he intruded certain words into the Eusebian context, which might express a false opinion, he turned his style against Eusebius, as if he were the author of it. For writing in that book concerning the Jerusalem disaster, he says: *These things it would be right to add, which might serve as proof of the benevolence of the all-good providence, putting off the destruction that was to overtake them for forty full years after the crime committed against Christ.* These things are rightly to be added; from which the kindness of that most excellent providence appears, which delayed their destruction for forty whole years after the crime committed against Christ. Scaliger suspects there is a blunder here, and indeed a very ancient one, which is even recognized by Rufinus. For after *forty full years*, he wishes *is* (there are) to be missing, so that Eusebius might have written that forty-eight years had flowed by from the Passion. Then he says, *One must be a very novice in Hellenism not to see that a number is missing in that gap which we have left.* But I say he must be a very knave who would attribute his own errors to ancient writers against their will and protest, for what is the need of this depravation? He affirms that this disaster was delayed for forty full years from the Passion. In which he is most consistent with himself. In the *Chronicle*, and in book I of the *History*, chapter 10, Eusebius judges that Christ was baptized in the 15th year of Tiberius, and suffered in the 18th. The 32nd year of Christ is assigned to the 18th year of Tiberius. But the destruction of Jerusalem is compared in the Eusebian *Chronicle* to the 2nd year of Vespasian, with the year of Christ 71. Subtracting 32 years from 71, there remain 39. Therefore, in the 40th year from the Passion, according to the mind of Eusebius, Jerusalem was destroyed. And so Clement of Alexandria, in book I of the *Stromata*, who assigns the Passion to the 15th year of Tiberius, thinks that the capture occurred forty-two years and three months later. Epiphanius, as was shown in his 51st heresy, conferred the Passion to that year in which Tiberius...
V and Sejanus were consuls: who responds 31. Since, therefore, the city was destroyed in the 70th Dionysian year, the year of the Passion is the fortieth from the destruction. Epiphanius must therefore be corrected when he said that sixty-five years had elapsed: a number that can be obtained from neither the Nativity nor the Passion. As regards the month and day on which the temple and the city itself were destroyed: Scaliger, in book v of *De emendatione*, determined that the temple was burned on the 10th of August, and the city on the 6th of September, and furthermore, in that same year, the 14th of Nisan, or Passover, fell on the 14th of April; a fact over which he marvelously triumphs because it is accommodated to his method. But all these things are full of hallucinations and dreams. For in that he cites Josephus A as a witness to Nisan, he errs not inconsiderably. For in book v of the *Jewish War*, chapter 11, he writes thus: "When the war had ceased for a short time outside, the sedition was again stirred up within, and on the day of the feast of Unleavened Bread, on the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus, on which the Jews believe they were first delivered from the Egyptians." He says the day of Unleavened Bread began on Nisan, the day on which they had once been delivered from Egyptian servitude. Rufinus, the corruptor of Josephus, in book vi, chapter 4, rendered it the 14th of April; and he imposed this on Scaliger, Calvisius, and others. But there is no one so dull as not to see that Josephus is speaking of a lunar month, not a Julian and fixed one, as he says it happened on the same day on which the Jews formerly migrated from Egypt. But this 14th of Nisan was lunar, or accurate, or civil. Furthermore, even if we imagine that Josephus understood a Julian month, it will by no means be April, but March. For the Macedonian months are used differently by Josephus than by the later Greeks—specifically, the Syromacedonians: there is indeed the same name for both; but the Macedonian months, when they are fixed, precede the Syromacedonian months by one month; as was declared at greater length in heresy 51. Xanthicus is by the usage of the Syromacedonians and Greeks the equivalent of April; Lous of August; but the Macedonian Xanthicus corresponds to March rather than April; Lous to July. Therefore B Nisan in Josephus is compared with Xanthicus, and Lous with Ab: of which the lunar Nisan occupies the greater part of March, and Lous of July. Whether Josephus translated the names of the Macedonian months to fixed and Julian ones is a question for another place and subject. We, however the matter stands, deny that the Xanthicus in Josephus is the Julian April. But the usage of the Greeks and Syromacedonians was a deception to Scaliger, and before him to Rufinus, who established the order of the months differently than the Macedonians. See what we have explained more fully on that place in heresy 51. Wherefore, when Josephus says in book vi, chapter 26, that the temple burned on the 10th day of the month of Lous, I think it pertains to July rather than August, just as when he relates in chapter 47 that the city was overthrown on the 8th of the month of Gorpiaeus, I suspect it corresponds to August rather than September.
The opinions of the Hebrews concerning the year of the destruction of the temple are divergent, which R. Issachar ben Mordecai recounts in his *Computus*. For he writes that he found in various synagogue tables the year noted as 5299 according to the Jewish reckoning, in other places the year of contracts 1849; from the destruction of the temple 1469; in other places the year of contracts 1850, of the destruction 1470; in other places the year of contracts 1851, of the destruction 1472. The author himself thinks the Jewish year 5299 is 1470 from the destruction. Then he adds that from Tishri, which immediately follows the devastation of the temple, the years of *Shemitah* and *Jubilees* are numbered: so that that year, whose Tishri followed the destruction, was the fifteenth of the ninth Jubilee. Subtracting 1470 from the Jewish year 5299 leaves 68. Wherefore, according to his opinion, the Tishri of that year in which the destruction of the city occurred began in the year of Christ 68, and in the following, 69, the temple was overturned, in a Sabbatic year: for the head of that era, from the destruction, matches the Tishri of the 69th Dionysian year, after the temple was demolished. Therefore he errs by one year. Those whom that author writes regarding the Jewish year 5299 as 1469 from the destruction feel more correctly. For having subtracted 1469 years from 5299, 3830 remains; the Tishri of which began in the year of Christ 69, in which year, already inclining toward the seventieth year of Christ, Jerusalem was devastated, in the first year of the *Shemitah*.
Nerva, year 1. Very poorly in the *Ancoratus* it says "four years." Eusebius thus, as in this place, assigns one year and four months; Dio adds nine days; Eutropius eight. From the 18th day of September in the year of Christ 96 to the 6th or 5th of the Kalends of February, or the 27th of January, in the year 98, that time of Nerva intervenes. He died therefore in the year of Christ 98, of the Julian period 4311, in the lunar cycle 4. For Scaliger is deceived, who, because he was hallucinating in consigning the beginning of Nerva and the death of Domitian, committed the same error at the exit of Nerva and the beginning of Trajan. For he writes in book v of *De emendatione temporum* that Nerva died in cycle 3, year of Nabonassar 844, on the new moon of Phamenoth. This is the year of the Julian period 4810; of Christ 97, in the lunar cycle 3. But we have just demonstrated that Domitian was killed in the year of Christ 96, during the consulship of Vetere and Valens, of the Julian period 4809, in the lunar cycle 2. Therefore, since Nerva ruled for no more than one year and four months and nine days, it is necessary that this time ended in the year of Christ 98, in the lunar cycle 4, of the Julian period 4711. C But most absurd is the correction of that same Scaliger, by which he disputes the Onufrian *Fasti*, because they attribute two pairs of consuls to the reign of Nerva: For he says only one pair of consuls is to be placed between the beginning of Nerva and those Kalends of January on which he died. But the *Fasti Siculi* correctly attribute only one pair. The *Fasti* must therefore be corrected. But he himself should surely be corrected instead. Since Nerva began at the end of the year of Christ 96, and died at the beginning of 98, that is, on the 6th of the Kalends of February; two pairs of consuls belong to his reign: namely in the year 97, in which, according to Onufrius and in the *Fasti Siculi*, the consuls are recorded as Nerva III and Virginius Rufus II. Likewise in the year 98, Nerva IV and Trajan II; which year Nerva partook of. Nor do the *Fasti Siculi* dissent, or do anything other than Onufrius, except that... D
A they render Trajan alone as consul for this year: which is to say, since Nerva had held the consulship for a few days, Trajan was left alone in it. Therefore, Scaliger’s *alogistia* is wonderful, as he betrayed himself in such a gross error. But there is a certain observation of Menelaus in Ptolemy, book VII, p. 170, who noted that in the first year of Trajan, the moon at Rome was in conjunction with the Spike (Spica), in the year of Nabonassar 845, Mechir 15, on the following 16th. The time corresponds to the year of the Lord 98, Julian period 4711, January 10, with the 11th following. Since Nerva, therefore, died about January 25; if we say he died in the year of Christ 98, the first year of Trajan had not yet begun at the time of that observation. Wherefore it seems that Trajan began in the year of Christ 97: in the first year of his reign, at its conclusion, January 11, fourteen days before the beginning of the second; for Menelaus observed the conjunction of the moon. Thus Scaliger. Which is a very slight point indeed. For Menelaus reckoned the first year of Trajan from the preceding Kalends of January in the Roman manner, not from the epoch itself precisely.
*Trajanus, 19 years.* Eusebius adds 6 months; Dio 6 months and 15 days: Eutropius concurs. Victor gives almost twenty years. Therefore, since he began in the year of Christ 98, on the VI day before the Kalends of February: he died in the year 117, with the 20th year already begun: of which 6 months and 15 days, from the VI day before the Kalends of February to the IV day before the Ides of August, had already elapsed. For on the next day Hadrian began his reign. Altogether, therefore, Trajan died in the year of Christ 117, of the Julian period 4850, if he reigned for as many years as are commonly counted; not 4829, as Scaliger thinks—in whose work, wrongly and through the fault of the copyists, I believe, the year of Christ 117 is set for 116. For this corresponds to year 4829 of the Julian period.
*After Trajan, Hadrian, 21 years.* It is very strange that chronologists should have dealt so lightly with the explanation of the years and the start of the Emperor Hadrian. Yet I do not know if any emperor’s time presents a greater and more difficult question. Wherefore we must necessarily apply ourselves to it so that, if we cannot remove all controversy, we may at least point it out, while most people either ignore it or are unobservant of it. Therefore Spartianus in *Hadrian* assigns him 21 years and 11 months. Eutropius, 21 years, 10 months, 20 days. But Victor, 20 years, 11 months; Dio the same. Which is truer, and is believed by Casaubon in his Notes on Spartianus. Scaliger, as much in his book V *De emendatione temporum* as in his *Animadversiones* on Eusebius, mixes and perturbs everything. For he considers that Hadrian reigned for 22 years, one month less; in book V *De emendatione temporum*, p. 459, he says he entered his reign in the year of the Julian period 4829 and reigned 21 years and 11 months. These, counted from the Ides of August of the year 4829, end on the VI day before the Ides of July of the year 4850. The year 4829 is Dionysius’s year of Christ 116. But 4850 is 137. Wherefore the B *aprosophia* (incongruity) is clear. For if you count 21 years and 11 months from the 11th day of August of the year of Christ 116, they end on the 10th day of July of the year 138, or the Julian period 4851. In the Eusebian *Animadversiones*, p. 191, the hallucination is greater C as he attempts to establish that Hadrian reigned 21 years, 11 months, according to Xiphilinus. Wherefore, he says, without error we can impute 22 years to him. That about Xiphilinus is false. For he does not attribute 21 years, but only 20. Furthermore, he compares the death of Trajan and the beginning of Hadrian to the year of Christ 117, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls, and the death of Hadrian and the beginning of Antoninus to the year of Christ 137; which he repeats on page 200. In those two years his calculation is entirely adrift. For in the same Julian year in which Hadrian died, he was to start his 20th year after a month: since he reigned 11 months over 21 years. Let us grant, therefore, that he began to reign in the year of Christ 117, in the 11th month, August; the 22nd year, with 21 completed, began in the year of Christ 138, whose 11th month ended on July 10, 139, when Hadrian died, when one month was still lacking to complete 22 years; so that the 23rd, August 11, that is, the Ides, would begin. Wrongly, therefore, is Hadrian’s exit conjectured in the year 137. But he removes greater mockery from such an argument. The year, he says, of Christ 137 is the first of Antoninus, and 138 up to the month of August is the same current year of Antoninus; from which if we subtract 22 years, there will remain the year of Trajan's death, 117 of Christ, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls. In the year of Christ 138 the second year of Antoninus began; but Hadrian died in the year 137: and yet to investigate the beginning of Hadrian, he subtracts twenty-two from the year 138; which should have been done from 157, or rather 356, when his last year is said to have begun. Subtract twenty-three from the years 137 (for Hadrian’s 25th was to be begun in the year 137), 114 will remain. Therefore in the year of Christ 115 Hadrian’s first year began, three years before Trajan's death, which Scaliger himself assigns to the year 117, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls. Than which nothing is more inept. Wherefore Hadrian cannot have reached twenty-three years, less one month: nor did he reign for more than 20 years and 11 months, as Dio and Eutropius affirm: from which all others must be corrected. Moreover, Trajan, with Niger and Apronianus as consuls, departed from the living in the year of Christ 117, in the month of August. Whence the beginning of Hadrian arises from the 11th day before the Ides of August. From which day the estimated 20 years and 11 months end on the 6th day before the Ides of July of the year 138, of the Julian period 4851, in the 6th cycle of the moon. Which itself is also deduced from the years Hadrian lived. For he was born, according to Spartianus, in the consulship of Vespasian VII and Titus V, in the year of the City 829, Julian 121, of Christ 76, of the Julian period 4789, on the 9th day before the Kalends of February. But he lived 62 years, 5 months, and 19 days, as Xiphilinus says. For Spartianus must be corrected, who counts 72 years, when Eutropius and Victor record that he died older than sixty. The 62 years, 5 months, and 19 days, counted from the 9th day before the Kalends of February of the year of Christ 76, fall on the 12th or 10th of July (for Spartianus arrogates only 17 days) of the year 138. Wherefore it is the common opinion of almost everyone that the death of Hadrian falls in the year of Christ 138, of the City 891, in the consulship of Camerinus and Magnus. But to this, in 𝒟
A February, with the year of Christ 158, it is compared. The beginning of this year, therefore, corresponds to the year 137, and thus the first year began in 137. The remaining observations are consistent with these. Wherefore, if the notes of the years are rendered in good faith by Ptolemy or the scribes—of which it is hardly possible to doubt prudently—since he is consistent with himself in so many observations, it is necessary that the beginning of Hadrian be pushed back by one year and cast into the year of Christ 116; and his death, and the beginning of Antoninus, into the year 137. This being established, one year must be deducted from the years of Trajan or Domitian: so that either the former completed only fourteen years, or the latter eighteen full years with the remaining months, while Hadrian completed twenty with eleven months. B It is not that we think something should be taken away from the years of Domitian, but that all should agree remarkably well among themselves, not only regarding his years, but also the consuls under whom he died. Furthermore, it must be seen whether eighteen years with nine months should be ascribed to Trajan: and thus Trajan did not die in the consulship of Niger and Apronianus, in the year of Christ 117, but in that of Aelianus and Vetus, in the year 116. Whence also, in the number of years that Hadrian is said to have lived, one must be cut away; or certainly he was not born in that consulship of Vespasian VII and Titus V, that is, in the year of Christ 76, but in the year preceding: unless perhaps some disturbance occurred in the series of consuls, which is the last resort. On this matter, we appeal to the judgments of learned men and those expert in antiquity.
“From Augustus, then, until Hadrian.” If you subtract the numbers conceived by Epiphanius, you will find 180 years, C with 6 months and 21 days from Augustus; if you set the months at thirty days, even unto the end of Hadrian. We have already determined that the beginning of Augustus, according to the mind of Epiphanius, falls in the third Julian year, 711 of the City by the Varronian calculation, or the second after the slaughter of Julius. This is in the Julian period 4671. The death of Hadrian is commonly conjectured to be in the year of Christ 138, Julian period 4851. From the year 4671 to 4851, therefore, the solid years are reckoned at 180 and some months, such that the hundred and eighty-first year begins in that very year 4851. I wish Epiphanius had indicated from what day he reckoned the beginning of Augustus, so that we might know why he imputed 180 solid years and four months, minus 9 days. Hadrian died D on the 6th day before the Ides of July (July 10th), from which day if you count back three months and 21 days, you will arrive at March 21st; on which day the Council of Nicaea fixed the equinox according to nature (πολιτικῶς) : and this day is the new moon of the first paschal month, which, as is evident from the paschal terms and the mind of Anatolius and other ancients, as we said in *Haer.* LI, is the case. Therefore, it is likely that Epiphanius places the epoch of the empire of Augustus on that day, when he attributes to it more than 180 years and four months minus 9 days.
“So that from the time of the interpretation.” From the seventh year of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the last year of Cleopatra, Epiphanius counted 249 years; although, according to him, they are in truth 259. Again, from Augustus...
to the twelfth year of Hadrian, there are 171 years, 6 months, and 21 days. If you join these to the 259, there will result 430 years, 6 months, and 21 days, provided you count the months of 30 days from the remaining days. It appears, therefore, that from the seventh year of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the end of Cleopatra, not 249, but 259 years are to be imputed. But that calculation A of Epiphanius is wonderful and deeply ignorant, if we wish to accept it as it presents itself; for there are two *emades* [sums/periods], from which the total of 430 years is compiled: the first is from the seventh year of Philadelphus to the last of Cleopatra, of 259 years; the second from the beginning of Augustus to the twelfth of Hadrian, of nearly 171 years. By this reasoning, it is necessary that the first year of Augustus be counted after the last of Cleopatra. Yet the last year of Cleopatra corresponds to the year of the City 724, the sixteenth of the Julian calendar, but the fourteenth of the Emperor Augustus. The Epiphanian calculation in this part, as Lucilius says, is perverse, with the era improperly subtracted. These things should indeed be restored thus: the seventh year of Philadelphus, as we demonstrated above, corresponds to the year of the Julian period 4435; but the twelfth year of Hadrian, 128 of Christ, is year 4841 of the Julian period. From the seventh year of Philadelphus to the twelfth of Hadrian, 406 years are collected. Thus, the calculation of Epiphanius errs by 24 solid years.
*Οὗτος δὲ ὁ Ἀδριανός*. Athanasius says the same of Aquila: "Under the Emperor Hadrian, the *leptothentos* [wasted away]." For this, Scaliger very absurdly corrects it to *leptothentos* [thinning], although *leptotheis* could barely be said with any elegance for *leptyntheis*. For, as Victor says, Hadrian perished consumed by a wasting disease. See Spartian.
*Οἱ δὲ πολλὰ κεκμηκότες*. Xiphilinus: "He died saying and crying out the common saying, that many physicians have destroyed the king."
*Στέλλεται τὴν πορείαν*. These things are subjoined too abruptly concerning the journey, as if Hadrian undertook it after he fell ill. Therefore, *στέλλεται δέ* [but he sets out] must be added. Hadrian traveled much and for a long time, as is evident from B Spartian, Xiphilinus, and others, and he frequently traversed the East and Syria. This expedition, however, about which Epiphanius here speaks, happened at that time when he restored Jerusalem. When this was done is not easy to discern. For the Jews were not compressed and subdued only once by Hadrian. In the second year of his reign, he crushed them as they were rebelling, as Eusebius writes in his *Chronicle*. The *Alexandrine Chronicle* refers this to year twelve; and adds that at that time Hadrian came to Jerusalem, and having captured the Jews, came to the terebinth, and there established their market; finally, having overthrown the temple, he restored the city and called it Aelia after his own name. These things are partly false, and partly placed at the wrong time. It is false that Hadrian demolished the temple of the Jews, which did not exist anywhere at that time. But the restoration of the city happened long afterwards. The first slaughter of the Jews under Hadrian happened at the beginning of his reign, as Scaliger rightly observes in his *Animadversiones* for the year 2124, when they stirred up the sedition that seems to have been repressed by Turbo. The later, longer, and more horrible movement is referred to the sixteenth year of Hadrian in the Eusebian *Chronicle*. Its author was Cochebas, or Barcochebas, who was a certain brigand. Spartianus says the cause of the war was that they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals; Xiphilinus, following Dio, says it was because when he had restored Jerusalem and named it Aelia, he built a temple of Jupiter in the same place where the temple had once stood. Whence the Jews, gravely moved, stirred up a fierce war under the leader, as has been said, Barcocheba, which Justin C testifies in his *Apology*. Eusebius, however, writes that an end was put to this in the eighteenth year of Hadrian, which he also narrates in Book IV of his *Ecclesiastical History*, chapter 6, from Aristo of Pella. Yet Aristo had written that the war *akmasai* [flourished/was at its peak] in that eighteenth year of Hadrian’s reign. Therefore, Scaliger thinks it ceased at the end of Hadrian’s reign, and could not have been terminated in the eighteenth year. But that reasoning is futile and very weak; for the force of the war could have pressed into the final year when Hadrian besieged Bether: which, having been brought into his power, and the leaders of the faction having been killed, the whole war was extinguished. I said that the restoration of Jerusalem, in the opinion of some, was later than that Jewish sedition, but that Dio wrote it happened before. If it happened before the Jews were compressed and defeated, this is under the sixteenth year of Hadrian, when it is the year of Christ 132 or 133; from the destruction of the city, which happened in the second year of Vespasian, year of Christ 70, there are nearly 63 years. And there will be two or three more if Hadrian rebuilt the city after the war had ended. Wherefore the number of Epiphanius, who collects 47 years from that destruction, is not sufficiently accurate. Although he thinks it was not in the second year of Vespasian, but of Titus, that the city was stormed, and from him to that time when Hadrian rebuilt it, or when he came to the place itself—which could have preceded the sixteenth year by some years—there can be found more or less 46 years.
*Ἦν κατέστρεψε Τίτος*. False, that it happened under Titus, for that happened while D Vespasian was reigning.
*Καὶ εὗρε τὴν πόλιν πᾶσαν*. Most of the ancient Fathers deny that Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by Titus; but they say that the middle part of the city survived the destruction, which Hadrian later leveled to the ground. Therefore, they assert that it was destroyed twice. Thus Eusebius in Book VIII of *Demonstratio Evangelica*, chapter 18, Jerome, and others, whom Scaliger cites and refutes at the year 2140 of Eusebius. These same men narrate that this second calamity of the city fell upon it after that Jewish sedition stirred up by Cocheba, and he himself having been killed, and that only then was the city utterly destroyed, and Aelia raised from its ruins. For my part, I wholly assent to Dio, who affirms that Aelia was founded by Hadrian before that Jewish movement, and on whose occasion he reports that the Jews rebelled when he had built a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus there. Nor can I approve of the assertion that the middle part of the city survived that former destruction. It cannot, however, be denied that some small remnants persisted until Hadrian’s time; which is too much...
A rigidly asserted by Scaliger. He also refutes Epiphanius, who says that some buildings and synagogues remained along with the temples of the Christians. For he opposes that prophecy of Christ the Lord: *There shall not be left one stone upon another* (Matt. xxiv, 2). Indeed Josephus himself, in book vi, chapter 18, writes that three towers were left by Titus along with the western part of the wall, so that they might serve as a camp for the guards. Hence, those words of Christ do not seem to be taken so rigidly that not even a small part of the city remained, but that it was for the most part razed to the ground and leveled, or at any rate that the outcome of that prophecy also embraces the times of Hadrian. Therefore it happened little by little that, in part, the Jews and, in part, the Christians established homes either in that surviving part of the city or in some nearby place. All these things, together with the remains of the ancient Jerusalem, were demolished by Hadrian, and he built a new city from the foundations: not, however, on the same footprint where the former had stood, but, as often happens in the restoration of cities, not far from the old site. Hence it is that Hilary, on Ps. cxxxi and cxlvi, Athanasius in his book *On the Incarnation of the Word*, and certain others say that Jerusalem did not exist at their own time: for because the new city was built by Hadrian not in the same spot where the former had been situated, they denied that Jerusalem survived. The words of Hilary must be carefully attended to: *But that the faith of events teaches that it is the same today.* It is not the same, he says, because it was situated at some distance from the old site. Gregory the Great favors this interpretation in homily 39, where he explains these same words of the Lord in this way: "This also which is added: *'They shall not leave in thee a stone upon stone'* (Luke xix, 44), is testified to by the very migration of the city itself. For since it is now built in that place where the Lord had been crucified outside the gate, that former Jerusalem, it is said, has been utterly destroyed."
C *And having taken this Aquila.* All these things seem fabulous and fabricated by idle Jews. Especially because he says Aquila was the D *pentheros* (father-in-law) of Hadrian. Since this word has not been read by me elsewhere, it signifies either *pentheron* (father-in-law) or a son of a *pentherou*, certainly a relative by marriage. We have rendered it "father-in-law," as if *pentheron* were read, just as I suspect the writer of the Alexandrian Chronicle read it here. For on page 598, referring to the history of Aquila to the Pontiff from this passage of Epiphanius, he says: *'Akulas* was known, who was the *pentheros* of Hadrian the King. Jerome mentions Aquila in various places, especially against Rufinus, apol. 2, and elsewhere he calls him a contentious proselyte, and one who chases after etymologies of names, otherwise a diligent and curious translator. And in chapter viii of Isaiah, he writes in the opinion of some that this man was a disciple of Akiba, yet he does not signify that he preceded the times of Christ, as some assert from that passage of Jerome.
*And seven synagogues.* Optatus of Milevis seems to speak of these in book iii, where he deals with Sion: On whose summit, he says, is a not-large plain; where there were seven synagogues; where the Jewish people could gather and learn the law given through Moses.
Antoninus nicknamed Pius. Eusebius assigns 22 years and 3 months; Victor 23, Eutropius and Cassiodorus 21, Onufrius 22, 7 months, 26 days. He lived, however, to the year of the City 914, M. Aurelius Verus being consul for the third time, and L. Verus for the first, as Onufrius gathers from inscriptions and ancient coins. This is the year of Christ 161, in which indeed, on the Nones of March, as the same man proves, Antoninus Pius passed away. If, therefore, you have drawn the beginning of Antoninus from the year 158, as is commonly done, to the year we have said, 161, on the 7th of March; there are 21 complete years, 6 months, and about 28 days. But from the observations of Ptolemy it must necessarily be confessed that Antoninus began in the year of Christ 137, December 16. If he counts the second year of Antoninus in the year of Christ 138, December 16, and carried it through to May 17, of the year 139. Yet in September of the year 139 he counts the third year of Antoninus. Therefore it cannot be that the first year of Christ began in 137, contrary to the faith of all chronologists. Other observations, to which he has appended the years of Hadrian, also agree, so that a fair suspicion can exist for no one concerning the fault of the librarians, or the hallucination of Ptolemy himself. Who would not be moved by the authority of so great a man and so excellent a writer, who, when he was putting forth these things, could not have been ignorant of what year of Hadrian or Antoninus it was: especially with his death still recent, and that of the latter being at the beginning, namely in the year 158, which they commonly predicate as the beginning of Antoninus, in which indeed, December 16, Ptolemy counts the second of Antoninus. Thus Pius ruled for 23 years, 7 months, 28 days. Which is perhaps true: for Xiphilinus also assigns him 24 years. Antoninus was born, as Capitolinus says, when Domitian was consul for the 10th time and Dolabella for the 1st, on the 13th day before the Kalends of October; this year is 86 of Christ. But how many he lived the disagreement of the writers makes doubtful. Capitolinus attributes 70, Victor 72, Eutropius one more: Cassiodorus 77. From the year of Christ 86 and the 12th day before the Kalends of October to the Nones of March of the year 161, 74 years, 5 months, and 19 days intervene. Antoninus Pius lived just as long, if, as it seems, he died in the year of Christ 161. If it were a matter for us only of the years of Antoninus, Ptolemy's observations could somehow be reconciled with the common opinion, so that we might say that the beginning of the years was computed by him from the preceding new moon, Thoth. For just as the Hebrews teach in the Treatise *Rosh Hashanah*, when any king enters upon his empire in the last month, and thus on the last day of Adar, he is considered to be in the second year of his empire upon the new moon of Nisan; to which this opinion of theirs pertains, which Aben Ezra refers to in chapter 1 of Dan. *A day for a year is reckoned*; since the beginning of the previous years is derived from the preceding Nisan. Thus, it might perhaps not be absurdly thought that Ptolemy reckoned the year, for example, the second of Antoninus, and thus the first, from the new moon of Thoth, which is the epoch of that year.
A Indeed, it begins on the 6th of the Ides of July, or July 10, in the year 138, as is commonly thought. The new moon of Thoth in the same year began on July 20, being 11 days from the epoch of Antoninus. Since those 11 days precede the new moon of Thoth, they are considered as a full year. Hence, the second year of Antoninus will begin to be reckoned at the beginning of Thoth on July 20. Wherefore it would not be a wonder that it is compared by Ptolemy with that year, which is the year of Christ 158, December 16, as the second of Antoninus. But this conjecture, that it in no way disagrees with the years of Antoninus, cannot accommodate the times of Hadrian. For the epoch of his new moon of Thoth is later, from the 4th of the Ides of August, or August 10, in the 117th year of the Dionysian era, in which the first year of Hadrian is believed to have begun. The new moon of Thoth corresponds to July 24, being 16 days before the beginning of Hadrian. And yet, in the year of Christ 152, September 26, it is placed in the 17th year of Hadrian, and continues to the following May 6. Therefore, the first year, whether reckoned from the new moon of Thoth or from the epoch itself, began in the year of Christ 116; and all chronologies that have hitherto brought it to 117 must be corrected. I would say this not so much for the sake of affirming it, as to stimulate the studies of learned men, that if anything more suitable occurs to them, they may impart it to us candidly and kindly. Scaliger, in *Animadversiones in Eusebium* at the year 2154, brings the first year of Antoninus, on the authority of Censorinus, to that year B which had as consuls Antoninus Pius II and Bruttius Praesens; which he says is the year of Christ 158; a part of which, he says, with a part of the preceding, completes the first year of Antoninus. Hence he criticizes Onuphrius, because he composes that year with the year of Christ 140, a metachronism of two years. But in those few words Scaliger makes many errors. First, Censorinus nowhere said that the first year of Antoninus falls in those consulships. For these are his words on page 48: "When, 100 years ago from the imperator Antoninus Pius II and Bruttius Praesens as consuls, there were at Rome the same days on the 12th of the Kalends of August, etc." By which he signifies the 100th year from that when he was writing, namely, it is the year of Christ 258, of the building of the City 991, with Ulpius and Pontianus as consuls, having had Antoninus and Praesens as consuls. But this year was the year of Christ 139, from which the other 100th year of Censorinus is the year of Christ 238. This is Scaliger's second error; for the consulship of Antoninus and Praesens is brought to the year of the City according to the Varronian reckoning, which Onuphrius expressed, as 892; from the Capitoline Fasti, 891. Scaliger professes to follow the Varronian, according to which the first Palilia are conjectured to be in the year of the Julian period 3961. Whence that year of the City is 4852 of the Julian period, in the cycle of the moon 8, of the sun 8. Which characteristics apply to no other year than the year of Christ 139. That year 139 is therefore the one in which Antoninus II and Bruttius Praesens were consuls. Moreover, Onuphrius, who unwittingly advances the Dionysian era by one year in the years of Christ (for he attributes the birth of Christ to the consulship of Augustus XIII and Silanus), counts that same year as 140, which is only 139 from the Dionysian epoch. But in the *Annales*, he errs by a two-year prochronism, 141 of Christ it is considered. Of which perturbation of years we have said enough ad *haer*. 51. Concerning the third fallacy of Scaliger, we have warned above, when he attributes to Hadrian 21 years and 11 months, and yet brings his death to the year of Christ 137, in which he also records the first of Antoninus to have begun. For in this way, the first of Antoninus will correspond to the year of Christ 115. Which is a huge [παρεγχείρημα]. *He is followed by Caracallus.* These things are very corrupted. Nor do I know whether these words, "Caracallus, who is also Geta," should be rejected, so that the text may proceed: *He is followed by Marcus Aurelius, who was also called Verus.* On page 174, a slightly clearer and more sincere succession of emperors is proposed: where we also set forth another conjecture regarding this place; for what is read here, that M. Aurelius reigned for seven years, is most false; and yet, lest the fault be transferred to the librarian, the error is immediately confirmed when it is said that Lucius Aurelius Commodus reigned for seven years as well. *In his times, also Lucius.* He does not mean Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, who succeeded his parent, but Lucius Ceionius Aelius Commodus. But Antoninus, the son of Lucius Aelius Verus, who being adopted by Hadrian, was called the first Caesar, and died before Hadrian. His son was the first elevated by Hadrian to the hope of the empire with M. Aurelius, and reigned after Antoninus for 11 years. This Capitolinus (writes). Wrongly, therefore, are seven years attributed to him as well as to M. Aurelius. Hence it is that on page 174, in the series of the other emperors, two Commodi are placed. Which matter, as will be said shortly, gave Epiphanius the occasion for the error. C *In the times of Severus.* Of which Severus, finally? Of him whom he shortly before subjected to Pertinax? But Theodotio, whom he thinks posterior to Symmachus, wrote his edition under Commodus. But Commodus is prior to Severus. How, then, did Symmachus precede Theodotio? This has deservedly seemed wonderful and inextricable to many; nor must we so much seek a defense or cloak for the error of Epiphanius, as we must extract and investigate that very thing. For no one heretofore, of the many writers whom this passage of Epiphanius has vehemently exercised, has touched the very lair of the error: which, unless we are mistaken, we have finally sniffed out. It was agreed for Epiphanius that Symmachus existed before Theodotio; and likewise that Theodotio wrote under Severus, and Symmachus under Commodus. Since these things are incongruous and conflict with history, he observed that there were first two Commodi, one the colleague of M. Aurelius, who reigned commonly with him; the other the son, who succeeded his father Aurelius. Of these Commodi, he knew the latter to be the one under whom the edition of Theodotion had appeared. Therefore, he did not doubt that Severus had existed before him. Accordingly, he believed there were two Severi. And therefore on page 174, "After him," he says, that is M. Aurelius, "another Commodus reigns." Then of Severus: "He is followed by D
A a second." And at no. 17 it says that Theodotion published his work during the reign of the second Commodus, who succeeded the prior Commodus. Since, according to the mind of Epiphanius, there are two Commodi and an equal number of Severi, the former of these preceded the latter Commodus. Therefore, it is either M. Aurelius Verus or Lucius Commodus Verus. It cannot be the latter, because Severus the former is distinguished as much from both Commodi as from the later Severus. There is, therefore, no other than M. Aurelius Verus. Σοῦρος, I say, instead of Οὐῆρος, by which name this philosopher is called by Epiphanius. Indeed, traces of a corrupt reading demonstrate this a little earlier: "who was also called Marcus Aurelius Sourus." For which, at the margin, we have written to read Oueros. But now I would prefer Seueros: nor will he who has attentively weighed what I have said think that Epiphanius intended anything else. Nor did Epiphanius alone commit this error, of taking Severus for Verus; but others did as well, both Greeks B and Latins: many Greeks, indeed. Of the Latins, truly, Cassiodorus, under the consulship of Severus and Herennianus, adds these things: "In the eleventh year of the reign of these consuls, Lucius Annius Antoninus Severus perished by apoplexy between Concordia and Altinum." Since the former Severus, according to the opinion of Epiphanius, is M. Aurelius, and not he who succeeded Pertinax and Julian, it is apparent that Symmachus, who is placed by Epiphanius under that former Severus, is by no means to be referred to the times of the later Severus—which is what everyone hitherto has thought, who have also said that Epiphanius speaks inconsistently, and have thought that Symmachus was later than Theodotion for no other reason than that Epiphanius had reported that Theodotion interpreted under Commodus, and Symmachus under Severus. But I indeed cannot deny that Epiphanius errs, who has wrongly used Severus for Verus: but I defend that he is consistent with himself, and constant in his error: having erred, however, in one thing besides, namely that on page 172, when after Pertinax and Severus he added these words: "In the times of Severus, a certain Symmachus, etc.," he did not sufficiently express which Severus he was speaking of, since he had commemorated two, and he appeared not undeservedly to have understood the later one, to whom he subjoined these things immediately.
Let us recall our mind from this hallucination of Epiphanius to the common opinion concerning the age of both interpreters. For this opinion has already become inveterate among all the moderns: that Symmachus existed after Theodotion. Concerning which, it is a long time that I have been doubting: for I see no other argument for this presumption than that testimony of Epiphanius, by which he taught that Symmachus wrote under Severus, and Theodotion under Commodus. But with this now extorted, on what finally, relying on C what, will they fight that Theodotion is more ancient? But on the contrary, more things persuade me that the edition of Symmachus is earlier. In the first place, that order which Origen established in the codices: in which after Aquila, Symmachus is perpetually placed before Theodotion. Which, unless he were older, Origen would have no cause to arrange thus. For concerning the LXX Elders, whom it is agreed were the most ancient of all, the reason is provided by Epiphanius why they were cast into a strange place: that their interpretation, as being the rule for the others, occupied the middle place by right, so that the others could be more conveniently compared with it. Why, therefore, Symmachus was placed before Theodotion, no other cause can even be imagined, except that the latter preceded in age. For that which pleases some, that the seat was given to the later one after Theodotion, so that he might be near to the LXX Elders in order just as in the manner of interpreting, is trifling, nay, it is ridiculous. For since both of them surrounded the principal edition of the LXX Elders like guards and attendants, it made no difference at all to their proximity as to which side the edition of Theodotion was conferred upon. D The ancients seem to have noticed this, who in commemorating those interpreters place Symmachus before Theodotion, and rarely Theodotion before Symmachus. Nor do they call them by that order only when they use their testimonies taken from the codices of Origen, but then also when they explain the narrated events of each one individually. For in the first place, they set down the LXX Interpreters, under whom they add Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Thus Athanasius in his *Synopsis* affirms that Symmachus was earlier: whose edition he relates to have existed 56 years after the version of Aquila. If, as is the statement of Epiphanius, the interpretation of Aquila came forth in the 12th year of Hadrian, which is the year of Christ 128, or close to it, the 56th year from that falls in the year approximately 184, the fourth or fifth year of Commodus. But the same author of the *Synopsis* wrongly reports that it was edited under Severus. For immediately subjoining Theodotion, he says, "He also interpreted under the king Commodus in the same time." At the same time, he too interpreted under Commodus. Therefore, not one under Severus. Thus, on account of the neglect of exotic history, the most holy Fathers generally entangle themselves in inextricable snares: Epiphanius, finally, from whom the Alexandrian *Chronicon* and the moderns have drawn the sole and singular cornerstone of the contrary opinion, openly and without ambiguity confirms that Symmachus existed *prior* to Theodotion, and that the latter wrote under Commodus, the former under Verus, that is, M. Aurelius: whom he calls Severus in vain, and who led the author of that *Synopsis*, or the appendix of the *Synopsis*, which is attributed to Athanasius, to do the same. For this fragment is by no means, as I opine, of Athanasius, but of another writer, who, describing these things from Epiphanius, just as he did, used Severus for Verus. Wherefore, that which they commonly report—that Symmachus published under Severus, the successor of Pertinax—insofar as they assert that from Epiphanius, let all from now on change their opinion, and, if they desire to follow this author, let them move it back to the times of Marcus Aurelius Verus. Cedrenus writes that Symmachus, by the faith of Eusebius, was in the time of Pertinax. Which I have not yet found in Eusebius; for in
book VI of his History, chapter 12, and in book VII of his Demonstration, chapter 2, he explains who Symmachus was, but says not a word about his era. There is, however, to speak candidly, something that causes a difficulty in asserting the antiquity of Symmachus: namely, that Irenæus, who flourished in the time of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and also at the beginning of Severus, in book III, chapter 24, when he discourses against the Jews concerning that place in Isaiah, chapter VII, 14, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive," makes mention of the interpretations of Theodotion and Aquila, who had interpreted it differently, but not of Symmachus. Yet he, no less than those two, had rendered it "young woman" instead of "virgin," as Eusebius testifies in book VII of his Demonstration. Therefore, if his edition had existed at that time, it was used by the Ebionites, among whose sect Symmachus was, and it ought to have been refuted by Irenæus. Let the learned consider this. For we cannot yet settle on a consensus.
A "The thing more grievous than these" (Τὸ δὲ ἔτι τούτων χαλεπώτερον). See Cornelius Celsus, book V, chapter 25. In the book of Maccabees, chapter 1, Menelaus and Tobias brought foreskins upon themselves, which Jerome, in chapter LII of Isaiah, did not believe could be done.
"And having been encompassed with adhesives" (Καὶ κολλητικοῖς περιοδευθέντες). Perhaps it should be "circumscribed/bound" (περιδεθέντες). Though the other may be tolerated, it speaks of plasters with which that part is glued. See Celsus.
"After this, close upon his heels" (Μετὰ τοῦτον δὲ κατὰ πόδας). Indeed, Theodotion existed before him, not a Pontic but an Ephesian, as he is called by Athanasius, and what is the main point, by Irenæus, book I, chapter 24.
"Which afterwards in the voices/languages" (Ἅτινα εἰς ὕστερον ἐν τοῖς φωνῶν). Origen mixed the translation of Theodotion into the edition of the LXX Elders, distinguishing the whole work with an asterisk and an obelus, while either making those things shine forth which were previously lacking, or slaying and stabbing those things which were superfluous. So writes Jerome, Preface to the Pentateuch. See also epistle 89 to Augustine.
B "As many as indeed from the Jews" (Ὅσοι γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν Ἰουδαίων). Augustine reports the contrary in book I against Cresconius, chapter 31: "Could a circumcised man among the Samaritans, if he then wished to become a Jew, be circumcised again? Would not the error of that man be corrected, but the seal of faith be approved as having been recognized? And now there are some heretics who call themselves Nazarenes, but are called by some Symmachians, and they have the circumcision of the Jews and the baptism of the Christians; and by this, just as if any of them comes to the Jews, he cannot be circumcised again, so when he comes to us, he ought not to be re-baptized." Philastrius also makes mention of the Symmachians. But I think they were named by someone other than this interpreter. Indeed, it is not unworthy of observation that, as far as circumcision pertains, it had been permitted by the laws of the old emperors only to the Jews, and forbidden to others, even to the Samaritans. Regarding which matter, there is a remarkable passage in Origen, book II against Celsus, page 69: "But perhaps someone may say that the Samaritans are also persecuted on account of their own piety. To such people we shall reply: The Sicarii are put to death on account of circumcision, as mutilators against the laws and the license granted only to the Jews." Let someone say: Even the Samaritans endure persecution for their own religion. To whom we reply thus: Sicarii are subjected to the penalty of death on account of circumcision, as though mutilators contrary to the laws and the privilege granted only to the Jews. C Accordingly, the Samaritans are subjected to punishment as sicarii, as are also the mutilators of males. Modestinus, the jurist: It is permitted to Jews by the rescript of the divine Pius to circumcise only their sons; if anyone not of the same religion does this, the penalty for castration is imposed. That it was not lawful even for physicians to castrate is declared by Justin Martyr, Apology 2, by the example of a Christian who, in order to refute the rumor of promiscuous intercourse spread by the Gentiles against the Christians, offered a petition to Felix, the prefect of Egypt, by which he might be granted the power to be castrated: "For the physicians there said that it was forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor." Indeed, the Jews were also sometimes forbidden to mutilate the genitals. Spartianus, on Hadrian: "They set in motion at that time both the Jews' war, because they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals."
D "After Antoninus Pius" (Μετὰ Ἀντωνῖνον τὸν Πίον). We saw above that Epiphanius calls this man Severus instead of Verus. Hence on page 172 he is called M. Aurelius Souros: that is, Seuros, as I suppose. Although he is often rightly named Verus by Epiphanius. Eusebius assigns to him, besides nineteen years, a month: Eutropius and Victor assign eighteen years. He was born in the year of the consulship of Verus II and Augur, 5th of the Kalends of March, as Capitolinus says. That year is the year 121 of Christ. He lived 68 years, 8 months, 20 days, as Xiphilinus says. For he died on the 16th of the Kalends of April, by the same author, in the consulship of Præsens and Gordianus, in the Dionysian year 180. He reigned, therefore, for 19 full years, and 11 days besides.
"After him, another Commodus" (Μετὰ τοῦτον Κόμμοδος ἄλλος). He said "another" to distinguish him from the former, who was Marcus Aurelius's colleague; under whom he erroneously thinks Theodotion's edition appeared. Xiphilinus gives Commodus 12 years, 9 months, 14 days. Victor and Eutropius 12 years, 7 months. He was killed on the day before the Kalends of January, in the consulship of Commodus VII and Pertinax, in the Dionysian year 192. He reigned, therefore, 12 years, 8 months, 14 days.
"Him this Commodus succeeds" (Κόμμοδον τοῦτον διαδέχεται). It is false that he reigned for 6 months. For he did not complete even the third. Eutropius [gives him] 80 days, Dio 87: Victor attributes two fewer.
"This man is succeeded by another Severus" (Τοῦτον διαδέχεται Σενῆρος ἄλλος). He bypassed Julian. We have explained the reason why he calls him another Severus. Dio defines the time of his reign [as] 17 years, 8 months, 3 days. But Epiphanius shares this time with his son Antoninus Caracalla. In this, the logic escapes him: for Caracalla was named Augustus by his father in the consulship of Saturninus and Gallus, in about the 6th year of Severus. Severus died in the consulship of Gentianus and Bassus, in the year of Christ 211.
"After the death of Severus" (Τελευτήσαντος δὲ Σευήρου). Severus had two sons, Antoninus Caracalla and Geta. Epiphanius believes the former completed 18 years with his father; [and] the latter succeeded both. Which is most false: for neither did Geta have the name Caracalla, and the next year after his father's death, by his brother...
[to be read in the sense of Geta, the brother of Caracalla, who was killed by him]. Caracalla indeed, following the testimony of Dio, reigned A six years, eleven months, and five days. He died during the consulship of Praesens and Extricatus, in the Dionysian year 217. *In his seventh year.* See Eusebius, Book VI. The interpreter of Athanasius believed *pithois* [lit. "in the jars"] to be the proper name of a town. *Caracalla is succeeded by.* He omitted Macrinus, whom he had placed in the *Ancoratus*. He [Macrinus] reigned after Caracalla for one year and nearly eleven months. The pseudo-Antoninus Alagabalus succeeded him. Eusebius assigns four years to him; Eutropius assigns eleven years and eight months; Victor, in the *Caesares*, assigns thirty months; in the *Epitome* [he assigns] the same as Eutropius. But Lampridius writes that he reigned for nearly three years. Herodian, most liberal of all, assigns six years to him. *After him, Alexander reigned.* B He was killed on the 6th of the Ides of March by the soldiers, during the consulship of Alagabalus himself (the fourth time) and Alexander Caesar. Nor can there be any doubt about the year. For it is noble for its significant mark: namely, that on the first year of Alexander, as Hippolytus testifies in his *Paschal Canon*, the fourteenth of the Paschal cycle fell on the Ides of April, a Saturday: therefore, it was the seventh year of the solar cycle, the 14th of the lunar, in the Dionysian year 222, with F as the Sunday letter. Onufrius makes this the year 223 of Christ, on account of the Dionysian epoch being anticipated by one year; others say 224. Their metachronism, detected by this mark, deserves correction. Alexander reigned 13 years and 9 days, says Lampridius; Eutropius and also Victor agree. Herodian alone assigns 14 years; which indicates that the fourteenth year had already begun to be counted. He died therefore in the year of Christ 235, during the consulship of Severus and Quintianus. *At Nicopolis by Actium.* Incorrectly in Athanasius, *by the northern [Nicopolis]*. Whence the interpreter [wrote]: Northern Nicopolis. Read *by Actium*. C 1001 from the foundation of the City, in the consulship of Philippus III and Philippus the son II, not in the consulship of Aemilianus and Aquilinus, as Cassiodorus writes. That year is 248 of Christ, not 249, as it is in the *Annales*. Where a double error is made. First, that the secular games are said to have been celebrated while the thousandth year was passing; [whereas] they were performed when Philippus father and son were consuls, with the thousandth year already completed—that is, at the beginning of 1001; [which was] the consulship of Philippus father (III) and son (II), as ancient coins bear witness, which Onufrius—and indeed the *Annales* themselves, which is surprising—represent. Next, because they think that the thousandth year of the City itself coincides with the year of Christ 249. For if the discourse is about the Dionysian years of Christ, as it truly is, they confuse the accounts with that customary two-year metachronism. For the thousandth year of the City, according to the Varronian calculation, which the *Annales* follow, corresponds to the Dionysian year of Christ 247. This is manifest from those things which have been annotated sporadically in these *Animadversiones*: and among other things, from that excellent passage of Censorinus on page 47, where he writes that that year, in which Ulpius and Pontianus were consuls, and in which the one thousand and fourteenth year from the first Olympiad had begun from the summer days, was the nine hundred and ninety-first from the foundation of the City by the Parilia; but [the] Julian [year] was 283. D That cannot be any other year than 238 Dionysian, with an 11-year lunar cycle and a 23-year solar cycle, as is gathered from the comparison of the Olympiad, Julian, Nabonassar, and other years. Therefore, since the year of the City 991 has an 11-year lunar cycle, the first Varronian year of the City, which Censorinus embraces, falls into the 10-year lunar cycle and the 11-year solar [cycle]. Consequently, the thousandth year from the foundation of the City requires the 1st lunar cycle and 4th solar: which correspond to Christ's year 247. Therefore, that is the thousandth from the foundation of the City according to the opinion of Varro. For the year 249 obtains the [blank in original] lunar and 6th solar cycles. These things being thus established, those who attribute 5 years to the Philippi, since their beginning is marked by the consulship of Peregrinus and Aemilianus, which is the Dionysian year of Christ 244, attribute their death to [the time of] the consuls Aemilianus and Aquilinus, which is 1002 of the City, 249 of Christ. So Onufrius: who counts this same [event] as 250 of Christ, on account of the established anticipation of the years of Christ, about which we have often spoken. But those seven years that it pleased [the historians] to say he reigned... they think these Philippi died when the Decii were both consuls, as is in Cassiodorus, who calls the son Decius Etruscus. And that is the year of the City 1004, as Orosius recorded, 251 of Christ Dionysian. But the ancient inscription, which asserts that the Philippi were killed in the year of Christ 253, and which is referred to in the *Annales*, is without doubt vain and supposititious, and therefore deservedly omitted by Onufrius, if he even saw it. For the method of counting years derived from the Nativity of Christ is not so ancient that I should omit the fact that that inscription differs from the Dionysian method by two full years. *Decius succeeded him.* Eutropius assigns two full years to Decius, as does Victor in the *Caesares*.
In the *Epitome*, however, he says he reigned for thirty months; Cassiodorus says two years and four months; Epiphanius, following the *Chronicon* of Eusebius, says one year and three months.
"In the times of Decius." Under the Emperor Gallus, Origen died, being in his sixty-ninth year; this is the account of Eusebius (Book VII, ch. 1) and of Jerome in the *Catalogus*. Wherefore, what Epiphanius says, that he flourished from the time of Decius to Gallus and Volusianus, describes too narrow a space, since those emperors reigned for no more than two years and four months. For this reason, he should have said "Severus" instead of Decius, for it was under that emperor that Origen was held in high esteem. See Eusebius, Book VII, ch. 3. But as to Epiphanius’s writing that Origen outlived the reign of Gallus and Volusianus, Eusebius protests against this, for he expressly testifies that Origen departed this life during the reign of Gallus. Concerning this matter, we have spoken in *Heresy* 64.
"And Fabian at Rome." Concerning Fabian and Alexander, see Eusebius, Book VI, ch. 22.
"And Origen himself." Origen suffered many things for the name of Christ at various times. First under Severus, when, being sought for death many times, he escaped with difficulty. Regarding this, see Eusebius, Book VI, ch. 3. Then under Alexander; and thereafter under Decius: in which persecution we rightfully conjecture his lapse occurred.
"Having found [the books] of the fifth and sixth." No one has handed down more accurately than Epiphanius what the *Tetrapla*, *Hexapla*, and *Octapla* of Origen were. Because of this, all who have explained the nature of those volumes have drawn from his fountain; and yet, the majority of them have blundered greatly in this very clear passage of Epiphanius. Especially, however, Marianus Victorinus, who edited Jerome. In his annotations to Book I of the *Apology against Rufinus* (no. 63), he believes that Origen’s *Hexapla* was composed of six Greek editions, namely: the Seventy Elders, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, the Fifth, and the Sixth. He argues against Erasmus, who held a different view, by the authority—as he asserts—of Epiphanius. At this I am greatly surprised. For Epiphanius does not obscurely indicate what kind of editions these were, both here and in the *Heresy* of the Origenists (which is 64, no. 3), but here most especially. From this passage, we have proposed the order of the individual editions in a three-fold classification of codices in the following diagram.
ORIGEN’S TETRAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio]HEXAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Hebraica propriis litteris, Hebraica Graecis litteris conscripta, Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio]OCTAPLA
[Table omitted: includes Hebraica propriis litteris, Hebraica Graecis litteris conscripta, Aquila, Symmachus, Septuaginta, Theodotio, V editio, VI editio]Hence, the error of those is further refuted who, in the *Tetrapla*, attribute the first column to the Seventy Elders, whom Epiphanius so expressly states were placed in the third position. But Eusebius (Book VI, ch. 17), concerning the *Hexapla* of the Psalms, after the well-known and standard four editions, says: "Not only the fifth, but also the sixth and seventh translation having been set alongside, it was noted once again that they were found in Jericho in a jar during the times of Antoninus, the son of Severus." Therefore, there were seven editions in the *Hexapla*, so that they were not *Hexapla* but *Heptapla*. But what was that seventh? Was it Greek, or Hebrew? There were no Greek editions in the *Octapla* beyond six. If he means Hebrew, then Origen did not join *heptaplam* (the seventh) there, but rather an eighth, namely, that same Hebrew rendered in Greek letters. In the *Hexapla*, however, he did not exhibit six Greek editions, but only four. Therefore, the passage of Eusebius is strange, and if I am not mistaken, faulty. I judge, therefore, that this "and the seventh" must be deleted. Although I even find it translated from Eusebius in the Greek manuscript of the Imperial Library of Vienna, according to Nicephorus. Furthermore, I would believe that "in the fifth" is also faulty; for it, I suggest restoring: "In the fifth." For the fifth edition was found in a jar at Jericho, to which only that title had been prefixed. B Furthermore, it is worthy of consideration what Eusebius adds after those words: "Gathering all these into one, and dividing them into columns, and setting them opposite one another, along with the Hebrew itself as a clarification, he left behind for us the copies of what we call the *Hexapla*." From these words, it might be conjectured that if the reading "the seventh" is indeed sound, it is the Hebrew written in its own letters, to which the *semeiōsis*—that is, the same Hebrew expressed in Greek letters—was added. But the *Octapla* already existed, not the *Hexapla*. Or was the name of the *Hexapla* applied to the *Octapla* themselves, in so far as they consisted of six Greek editions? Indeed, Epiphanius (Heresy 64 of the Origenists, no. 3) seems to teach this very thing, besides Eusebius. C For he says that besides the six Greek editions, the *Hexapla* held two Hebrew ones, "so that the entire Old Testament would be called *Hexapla*, on account of the two Hebrew renderings." Read this passage more attentively. For he seems to accommodate the name of *Hexapla* even to the *Octapla* themselves, and indeed in the whole of the Old Testament, whereas Eusebius testifies to this only regarding the Psalter.
"After Gallus and Volusianus." Others generally assign them two years. Eutropius, Victor, etc. Eusebius adds four months in the *Chronicon*. In the *Historia*, however, not even two full years. But in the *Annals*—
A of A. 256, n. 35, four years are imputed, from old coins: on which is read "tribunician power IV" of Trebonianus Gallus. This tribunician power used to be multiplied as many times as the years since he succeeded to the empire, as Dio testifies. But if a biennium must be added to Gallus and Volusianus, this must be shared with Valerian and Gallienus: which it is strange that historians have concealed. Nor am I unaware how fallacious that conjecture usually is which is taken from the number of imperial years based on tribunician power, which are displayed on marbles or coins, as will be shown below regarding Tacitus and Carus. Decius was extinguished in the year of Christ 252, from which the beginning of Gallus and Volusianus arises.
*He reigned as Valerian*. Eusebius attributes fifteen years in the *Chronicon* and in the *Historia*: in which he has nearly all others as supporters; for they grant six or seven years to Valerian, and six or nine to Gallienus alone. The beginning of Valerian and Gallienus corresponds to the year of Christ 254; the end to the year 268. For Gallienus reached the fifteenth year. Epiphanius says three years less.
*In the ninth year then of this one*. Old chronologers assign the Manichaean infestation to various years. Our author here indeed writes that the collation of Archelaus with Manes occurred in the ninth year of Gallienus. But in the heresy of the Manichaeans, in about the fourth year of Aurelian. Commonly [dated to] the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, as we have argued more broadly in the same place.
*After Valerian and Gallienus*. These are from Eusebius. Most [assign] two years: which Baronius demonstrates to have been completed, such that he entered the third. Nor would I strongly disagree. Claudius began in the year of Christ 268, around the 10th of the Kalends of April, as Trebellius indicates. He ceased in the year 270.
*After this one, Probus reigned*. The years of the emperor Probus must be weighed a little more accurately. For in them, as it were, a certain axis of Christian chronology turns; and thus, having been reached at last in the books of the *Annals*, the series of years is brought back from error into the path after a long interval. It has been understood up to now from those things, especially which we proposed concerning the year of the Nativity of Christ to heresy 51, that many authors of *Annals*, in comparing the years of Christ with Roman or Greek history, have slipped by a biennium; others by only one year. Which happened to them for this reason, because they thought the Christian era, which corresponds to the year 4 of the 194th Olympiad, and indeed to the year 753 of the City by [Varro’s] calculation, ought to be drawn back to the second or third year of that same Olympiad, or the year 751 or 752 of the City. Hence, a metachronism B of one or two years befell these imprudent men; which is detected without any difficulty from the method of celestial observations and cycles. But since some are partly ignorant of this teaching, and partly even despise it, and the Fasti of the Consuls of those times—which are greatly uncertain and corrupted, and dissent from one another—provide a most convenient hiding place for either error or ignorance, the error was not recognized until some notable and illustrious epoch was reached, which would close a certain and defined interval. Of such a kind is the beginning of Diocletian, which corresponds to the 284th year of the Dionysian era. Then of Valentinian; whom it is established started in a bissextile year, that is, 364. Since, therefore, from that beginning which they had set for themselves, namely from the second year of the 194th Olympiad—lunar cycle XVIII, solar VII—the beginning of Diocletian, to which lunar cycle XIX, solar XII corresponds, should have had 286 years between them, or one fewer, from the third year of the same Olympiad—lunar cycle XIX, solar VII—so that they could reconcile their chronology with the Dionysian era, so that indeed the first year of Diocletian would fall in the 284th year of his Christian era; they removed one or another year, and as many pairs of consulships; which, as we said, in that dregs of the Roman empire they were able to do with impunity on account of the perturbations of the *Annals*. And the emperor Probus easily sustained this loss D and defect of years; concerning the time of whose reign there is some dissension among the primary authors: for Vopiscus attributes to him only five years; others six or seven; that is, six full years and four months. Thus Eutropius, Victor, Eusebius and from Eusebius our author; Julian in the *Caesars*, Cassiodorus, and nearly all others, except for Vopiscus alone. For which reason those who had hitherto advanced their *Annals* by one year or a biennium, by subtracting as many from the reign of Probus, henceforth made things equal with the Dionysian era. The emperor Augustus died in the consulship of the two Sexti, as Suetonius and Dio are witnesses. But the consulship of these, as well as the death of Augustus, corresponds to the 59th Julian year, the 14th of the Dionysian era: as the solar eclipse indicates, which happened at the time of his death.
*Aurelian succeeds this one*. Beyond Eusebius, Eutropius, Victor, Cassiodorus, etc., agree on this number of years. Only the author of the *Annals* attributes six years; because on an old coin the tribunician power VII is affixed. But nevertheless, I do not yet regret the common opinion. Aurelian began in the year 270, in the month of February, that is, the 10th of the Kalends of March, as Onuphrius reports from Vopiscus; he died in the year 275, at almost the same time; for after his death there was an interregnum of six months, on the authority of Vopiscus and Victor, until the 7th of the Kalends of October, at which time Tacitus was substituted by the senate. Thus he lightly touched the sixth year of his reign. Ancient inscriptions report no more than five tribunician powers.
*After this one, Tacitus reigned*. He began those six months from the 6th of the Kalends of October of the year 275, and extended them to April of the year 276. But in the inscriptions of Gruter, page 277, there exists one which arrogates two tribunician powers to Tacitus. Therefore, the time of the empire is not to be estimated from the number of the tribunician power. And it appears, unless Tacitus obtained the tribunician power before the empire, that this was doubled for him at the beginning of the Julian year, and in his ninth consulship, such that the earlier tribunician power occupied only three months; whether this was done in other cases, I do not yet dare to affirm. Indeed, the repetition of this power was not perpetually
A fixed, but by others sixty are posited. Wherefore, in this place two pairs of consuls, in that place only one are struck out. As this is very certainly established, so it is difficult to determine which consuls specifically are missing, given the vast discrepancy in the Fasti. For the sake of testing, however, we shall excerpt a series of some consuls from various Fasti. We shall lead their beginning from those consuls under whom, after Gallienus was killed,16 Claudius succeeded, as it seems to Onuphrius, namely the consuls Ovinius Paternus II and Marinianus. In the first and fourth columns we shall place the Onuphrian and Baronius consuls, and in the middle two, we shall append those excerpted from Cassiodorus and the Siculus Fasti.
A TABLE OF CERTAIN CONSULSHIPS EXCERPTED FROM VARIOUS FASTI.
[TABLE OMITTED]
B reached: where two pairs of consuls having been removed, they agree with the common era. And indeed, Onuphrius believes Probus and Paulinus were suffect consuls; Baronius, Probus and Lupus. Both pairs are exhibited partly by the Siculus [Fasti] and partly by Cassiodorus. Another pair seems to be that of the Emperor Probus and Scorpianus: which consulship most people distinguish from the others. But where it ought to be inserted, I do not believe should be anxiously inquired into in this place. This one thing I will warn: I by no means approve that which I see in certain Annals placing the consulship of Tacitus II and Aemilianus after the two of the Emperor Probus. More correctly, I opine, in the Siculus and Onuphrian Fasti all the consulships of Probus precede. For it is not credible that Probus held a consulship twice before the Emperor Tacitus.
A His authority is added, which Vopiscus signifies with these words: "Thus the empire of the whole world was delivered to him without any trouble by the judgment of both the soldiers and the senate." Then, that is an argument, which not far from Italy, namely in Illyricum, as Victor says, he was created by the soldiers. Wherefore in a few days this could be signified to the senate. B *After him reigned Carus.* Rightly do both he and Eusebius, as well as Orosius, impute two years to the three emperors: that is, from the beginning of Carus to the beginning of Diocletian. Yet these are not complete, but the second begins with a few months. In the *Ecclesiastical Annals* the death of the Emperor Probus is noted in the year of Christ 283, under the consuls Carus and Carinus; and in the same year Carus began with his sons Carinus and Numerianus. But the end of Carus is referred to the year of Christ 284, under the consuls Carinus II and Numerianus II. In which year also, Numerianus being slain, Diocletian was substituted by the soldiers, on the very Palilia, as is proved from the *Panegyric*. But it follows from this that Carus hardly reigned for three or four months; a fact which conflicts with history. The Emperor Probus, as was declared a little before, entered upon the empire about the month of July; and he died in the fourth month after his sixth year, in the month of November; whence Carus began, on the 4th of the Nones of November, as Onuphrius is the author. From the 4th of the Nones of November of the year 283 unto the 11th of the Kalends of May, or the Palilia of the following year, when Diocletian began, there are 5 months and almost 20 days. These must be taken from the reign of Carus and Numerianus. Thus Carus reigned for very few months. And yet even Numerianus himself, after the slaughter of Carus, for some time held the empire with his brother Carinus, as will be shown a little later.
It is necessary, therefore, to set the beginning of Carus in the year of Christ 282. Upon his death, in the year 283, uncertain in which month, and perhaps already declining, Numerianus and Carinus presided over the empire for several months. In an ancient inscription, the tribunician power is attributed twice to Carus, in Gruter, pages 277 and 278. For three [inscriptions] indicate the former tribunician power: IMP. CAES. AUG. CARO. PIO. FEL. INVICTO. PONT. MAX. TR. POT. P. P. PROCOS. Other [inscriptions] assign the second tribunician power to the same person. Which thing both restricts the observation of the *Annals* and confirms our conjecture, by which we have shown that the tribunician power was occasionally renewed on the Kalends of January. For D Carus did not obtain that [power] before his empire: since the prior tribunician power, as is evident from the stones, already fell to him as Augustus and emperor. And yet it is hardly the case that he reached a year. Nay, if there is any faith in the *Annals*, he reigned for very few months. There remains another knot, which Scaliger implies but does not untie, in *Animadvers. Euseb.* at the year 2299. For Numerianus is reported to have been slain a little after his father's death by the snares of his father-in-law. How therefore, he asks, will those things stand, which the same Vopiscus says of Carinus: "Most memorable, both of Carinus and of Numerianus, is that they held the empire, in that they gave the Roman games adorned with new spectacles"? How could both of them give those games, when Numerianus [was in the] Euphrates province...
could he have stayed on for a few days after his father’s death? Thus, I assume that A those games were given by Carinus alone. Moreover, Olympius Nemesianus says that his *Cynegetica* was written for Carinus when his father Carus was already dead, as he himself indicates in his verses. He also signifies that he wrote these same things while Numerianus was alive. Thus Scaliger. From these things I suspect that Numerianus survived for a few months after the death of Carus, up until April of the year 284, during which interval he held the empire with his brother; and so those very famous games were exhibited in the name of both, even if one was absent. Although even if Numerianus had lived only a very few days after the slaughter of Carus, it could have happened that both things occurred—that the games fell on those very days and were given by both, and that Nemesianus dedicated his *Cynegetica* to Carinus. Therefore, I do not see what room there could be for such great wonderment. Let the reader choose whichever he prefers: either that Carus began his second year of empire and extended his rule from November of the year 282 to January or February of the year 284, with the games actually being proclaimed in the approaching spring—say, in March—or that Carus was slain already in the passing year 283, and Numerianus ruled for several months. Finally, Carinus survived for a year or two after the death of his parent and brother; and he was killed by Diocletian, as Onufrio thinks, in the consulship of Diocletian and Aristobulus. Others assign this to the following year, in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus.
*After him, Diocletian.* There is nothing more illustrious, nothing more distinguished, than the era or beginning of Diocletian, from which the ancient Christians were accustomed to compute their times before the Dionysian era excluded it. And yet, it is incredible to say how much Scaliger struggled with it, and how perplexedly and confusedly he wrote about it, so much so that he does not even seem to have understood what he was saying. For in three places—that is, in Book V *De emendatione temporum*, in his *Eusebian Animadversions*, and finally in Book I of his *Isagoge canonica*—he designated three different times and brought forward things to illustrate that epoch which would leave a reader more uncertain than before.
For first, in book V *De emendatione*, page 466, he casts the beginning of Diocletian into the year of Christ 287. But he adds other things that seem to be B in agreement with this sentiment: the Julian period 3961, lunar cycle IX; but the year of Christ 287 is Julian period 5000, lunar cycle III. From the year 3961 to 5000 there are no more than 1040 years, so that the one thousand and fortieth began from the Parilia of the year of the Julian period 5000, Christ 287. Therefore this was not 1041. Furthermore, it is not true that the Varronian year of the City 1041 concurs with the second year of the 265th Olympiad. The year of the City 1041 is Julian period 5001, and it began in the year of Christ 288, in which the third year of the 266th Olympiad ended and the fourth began. Since, according to Scaliger’s opinion, the first year of Iphitus falls in the year of the Julian period 3958, 1062—that is, the second year of the 266th Olympiad—began in the year of the Julian period 4999. Eusebius, however, in the edition of Scaliger himself—both Latin and Greek—aligns the first year of Diocletian with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, not the second. Therefore, there are many errors of the man here. And those which he committed in his *Eusebian Animadversions* regarding the year 2301 are neither fewer nor lighter. For when Eusebius had fixed the beginning of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2301, the first year of the 266th Olympiad, he writes that there is a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January, and more if account is taken of the Diocletian era from the 19th of August, number 2500. For from there is the beginning of the year of the *paschalion* of the Egyptian Christians. But the Greek and Latin Churches began the years of Diocletian from March of the number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus II and Aquilinus. But the Egyptians [began] from the 29th of August of the Eusebian number 2300, in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus. Soon he subjoins these things: “Certainly according to Dionysius and the custom of the Latin Church, there are 284 completed years from the Incarnation to the first year of the Diocletian golden number; and the year 285 is the first of Diocletian from March.” These things are most confused. Eusebius apportions the first year of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2501. “But,” he says, “there is a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January, and more if from the 29th of August.” Therefore, according to the Romans, who begin from the Calends of January, the beginning of Diocletian would square with the Eusebian number 2300. But according to the Egyptians, who begin from Toth, or the 29th of August, it will C correspond to the number [1]299. Therefore, the Latin and Greek Churches, which began from March of the number 2301, do not seem to be contrary. Orosius, he says, writes that in the year of the City 1041, Diocletian was made emperor. This is to say, the year of the City 1041 began from those Varronian Parilia from which Diocletian began his empire. Therefore, that Varronian year falls on the 20th day of April, of the year of Christ 287, of the Julian period 5000, and of the second year of the 266th Olympiad, lunar cycle III, solar cycle XVI. Wherefore Eusebius writes things consistent with this, alongside the second year of the same, in the 266th Olympiad, and Bede in Book I of his *Ecclesiastical History*, chapter 6, where he says that Diocletian was elected by the army in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 286. These are roughly the things Scaliger says. Which, regarding the beginning of Diocletian, are not only false, as will be said a little later, but even contrary to themselves. For the first year of the founding of the city, from the opinion of Varro and Scaliger, is Julian period 3961, lunar cycle IX; the year of Christ 287 is Julian period 5000, lunar cycle III. From the year 3961 to 5000 there are not more than 1040 years, so that the 1040th year began from the Parilia of the year of the Julian period 5000, Christ 287. Thus it was not 1041. Furthermore, it is not true that the Varronian year of the City 1041 coincides with the second year of the 265th Olympiad. The year of the City 1041 is Julian period 5001, and it began in the year of Christ 288, in which the third year of the 266th Olympiad ended and the fourth began. Since, from Scaliger’s opinion, the first year of Iphitus fell in the year of the Julian period 3958, 1062—that is, the second year of the 266th Olympiad—began in the year of the Julian period 4999. But Eusebius aligns the first year of Diocletian with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, not the second, in the edition of Scaliger itself, both Latin and Greek. Here, therefore, there are many errors of the man. Nor are the things which he committed in the *Eusebian Animadversions* to the year 2301 fewer or lighter. For when Eusebius had fixed the beginning of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2301, the first year of the 266th Olympiad, he writes that there is a metachronism of one year if we calculate from the Calends of January, and more, if regard is had for the ratio of the Diocletian era, from the 19th of August, number 2500. For from there is the beginning of the year of the *paschalion* of the Egyptian Christians. But the Greek and Latin Churches began the years of Diocletian from March of the number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus II and Aquilinus. But the Egyptians from the 29th of August of the Eusebian number 2300, when Diocletian was a second time consul with Aristobulus. Soon he appends these things: "Certainly according to Dionysius and the custom of the Latin Church, there are 284 absolute years from the Incarnation to the first year of the Diocletian golden number; and the year 285 is the first of Diocletian from March." These things are most disturbed. Eusebius compares the first year of Diocletian to the year of Abraham 2501. "There is, however," he says, "a metachronism of one year if we count from the Calends of January: and more, if from the 29th of August. Therefore, according to the Romans, who begin from the Calends of January, the beginning of Diocletian would coincide with the Eusebian number 2300. But according to the Egyptians, who begin from Toth, or the 29th of August, it will agree with the number 1299. Therefore the Latin and Greek Churches from March of the number 2301 do not seem to be contrary: [others] follow, D which Scaliger does not think; but on the contrary, he corrects this very metachronism from the epoch of the Greeks and Latins. Then to the number 2301 in Eusebius is ascribed the year of Christ 286, with the first year of the 266th Olympiad, and in the consulships of Maximus II and Aquilinus. Where in the year of the Olympiad there is no metachronism, if indeed Eusebius repeats the head of the year from Nisan and the Passover. However, the Eusebian year of Christ is 286, of the Dionysian era 285; since Eusebius confers the Nativity of the Lord into the third year of the 19th Olympiad, and anticipates the Dionysian era by one year. Fourthly, the beginning of Diocletian is correctly attributed to the year 286, that is 285 common: of which the Latins' beginning of Diocletian [is] from January or March
A — because the Egyptians began [their year] several months earlier, that is on August 29, of the Dionysian year 274, or the Eusebian 285. In that same year 285, the first year of the 266th Olympiad began. Errors have been made in the consuls by those who added the consuls (for the books of Jerome do not show the consuls): since the consulship of Mamurinus and Aquilinus corresponds to the Dionysian year 286, which is the Eusebian 287, number 2302, not 2501. But the consulship of Diocletian and Aristobulus corresponds to the Dionysian year of Christ 285, Eusebian 285, and hence number 2501. Finally, the consulship of Carinus II and Numerian is to be attributed to the Dionysian year 284, number 2300: in which year Diocletian began [his reign], with the 19th cycle passing. The Egyptians fixed the epoch of Diocletian at the new moon of Thoth, or the following August 29, at which they began the golden number 1. Wherefore Scaliger teaches things manifestly contrary to himself, when he says both that the Latins count the years of Diocletian from March, number 2301, in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus; and a little later asserts that they begin in March of the Dionysian 285, the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, which is number 2300. The latter is true; the former is false. Just as is that which he added in the same *Animadversio*, that the fourth indiction began in the month of September in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, in the year that the new moon fell on the new moon of Thoth of Diocletian, on August 29. This year must be of the Dionysian era 284, Roman cycle 19, in which year the third indiction, not the fourth, began in September. The *Chronicon Alexandrinum* must be corrected, in which it is written that in the consulship of Diocletian II and Aristobulus, the years of Diocletian were arranged in the Paschal cycle according to the fourth indiction. This is B *asystaton* (incoherent). For according to the Egyptians, who begin from August 29 of the year 284, this occurred at the beginning of the third indiction. According to the Latins, from March of the year 285, it is likewise the third. The fourth, however, only began to be counted from the following September. Therefore, the *Chronicon* seems to retract the indiction from September to the preceding March, or else it reckons one year too late: for Diocletian and Aristobulus entered their consulship in the third indiction, in the year of Christ 285, not 286, as the *Chronicon* has it.
Scaliger cites this passage of Ammianus in his *Animadversiones*; and says that the fourth indiction began in the month of September under these consuls, and that the new moon fell on August 29. Which two characteristics cannot fit into the same Julian year. For the third indiction corresponds to September of the year 285, but the new moon of August 29 [corresponds to] the year 284, cycle 19, as we warned a little earlier. But whether he locates those consuls in the year 284 or 285, it is obvious how much he is in error when he later wished in the *Canones Isagogici* to place the beginning of Diocletian in the year 288; that is, the fourth, or truly the fifth year after he was made emperor: for before he held the ordinary consulship with Aristobulus, he had already been acclaimed emperor by the soldiers from the Kalends of January, and that from the Palilia, as Scaliger collects from the Panegyrist, and therefore in the year 284; for Diocletian and Aristobulus fall in the year 285. And then the same is confirmed from an old inscription which is in Gruter, p. 279, in which is read: "Diocletian, twice counsel, and second tribunician power." Wherefore if he entered the consulship in the year of Christ 285, with Aristobulus as colleague, he had already obtained the tribunician power in the previous year. But old inscriptions confuse the common calculation somewhat in the arrangement of these consulships. Of these, the one produced by Baronius joins the second consulship of Diocletian with the tribunician power. The other, which is read in Gruter p. 280, is of this sort: MAXIM. AUG.... N. DIOCLETIANO II COSS. SUB FELICE PROC. AUG. N. THERM. ANTONIANARUM. Commonly, the second consulship of Diocletian is joined with Aristobulus as colleague, as it is in the *Fasti Siculi*. But on the stone, it is with Maximian Augustus. The Siculi, however, compare Diocletian's third consulship with Maximian. Cassiodorus counts the first consulship of Diocletian as the one he held with Aristobulus; the second with Maximian. But according to the view of Cassiodorus, he held both while still a private citizen. In the *Fasti Siculi*, he entered the first consulship with Bassus while still a private citizen. Furthermore, they wish for Maximian to have been made a partner in the empire in the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus, in the year of Christ 286. C Contradictory to this are those things which are gathered from the stones: for the latter inscription persuades us that Diocletian had Maximian as Augustus already as his colleague in his second consulship. But since in the other inscription it is said that Diocletian was consul for the second time, and [held] tribunician power, these things can only be reconciled if the consulship of Diocletian II and Maximian is placed before D the consulship of Maximus and Aquilinus, in the year of Christ 286; in which year the second year of the tribunician power, just as of the imperial power, was elapsing; and thus Maximian would have obtained the empire in the previous year, or in that same year in which he was made consul. Or certainly in the same year in which Maximus and Aquilinus began the consulship from the Kalends of January; when Diocletian had taken Maximian as his colleague, he entered the consulship equally with him as a suffect consul. And indeed, that must also be considered which the panegyric addressed to the Augusti Maximian and Constantine asserts, that Maximian [was]...
A in the twentieth year, being eight times consul, was held by Rome herself in a kind of embrace. And straightway it adds: "You could not resist the command of that holy parent, and though unwilling, you submitted, and you returned to those vigils and those cares which you had experienced for twenty years."
But the year in which Diocletian and Maximian laid down their empire was 304 of Christ, as Zosimus indicates, B under the consulship of Diocletian IX and Maximian VIII, which the panegyrist also signifies, when Diocletian had barely completed his twentieth year. I ask, therefore, since Maximian began to reign in the third year after Diocletian, and ceased in the same year as he, how it is possible that he reigned for twenty years? They claim that under Maximus and Aquilinus as consuls, that is, in the year of Christ 286, Maximian was adopted by Diocletian as a colleague. From that time to the year 304, when they shed the empire in the month of April, Maximian’s sixteenth year was running, nor are more years attributed to him in the Alexandrian chronicle. But if he began his twentieth year, he must have been co-opted in the year immediately after Diocletian, so that by some anticipation from the Kalends of January of the year 304, his twentieth year is reckoned by the orator. But why do we hem and haw? Behold to you Aurelius Victor, published by our Schottus, who reveals that Diocletian laid aside the care of the state upon completing the twentieth year of his reign, and reluctantly compelled Herculius to do likewise, to whom there was less power in that year. Therefore, Maximian completed nineteen years, just as Diocletian completed twenty; and therefore, he began in the year 285. Yet in the *Epitome* he is said to have reigned for twenty years. It must therefore be examined again and again whether Maximian was adopted in the year of Diocletian and Aristobulus, that is, in the year 285 itself, and entered upon the consulship with Diocletian in the following year. For thus it can be true which ancient stones suggest, that the first consulship of Maximian corresponds with the second of Diocletian, and the second tribunician power of Maximian corresponds with that same consulship; and finally, that the second consulship and the second tribunician power of Diocletian will agree. Indeed, at the beginning of the year of Christ 286, with the second tribunician power of Diocletian running, one of the stones could have been inscribed; the other, however, after the Palilia, when Maximian had already entered his second year of empire and tribunician power, and both were holding the consulship. C We shall adhere to this conjecture for so long, until learned men have thought out something more exploratory and certain, which, as it is difficult in those most turbulent times, so the liberty of conjecturing must be much greater and certainly less offensive. From all these things, the faulty number of Epiphanius is to be corrected, who attributes thirteen years to Diocletian and Maximian. This cannot be ascribed to the fault of the copyists at all; for he partitions the years distinctly in such a way that, after the twelve during which the persecution raged, he reigned for one year before his abdication. But he reigned for twenty whole years; namely, from the Palilia of the year 284 to the Palilia of the year 304. For at the same time that he began, Diocletian laid down his empire, as Onuphrius records. Zosimus D writes in Book II that from the consulship of Chilo and Libo, under whom Severus restored the secular games, and the consulship of Diocletian IX and Maximian VIII, 101 years had flowed. Regarding which games Censorinus writes thus: "The eighth emperors were Septimius and M. Aurelius Antonius, in the year of Chilo and Libo, year 857." Correct this to 957. For they occurred in the year of the City 957, in the twelfth year of Severus, as is evident from an ancient inscription; and thus per Julian epoch 4917, or 204 of the Dionysian era. Wherefore, to the year 304, in which Diocletian and Maximian resigned, there are 101 years. From which it appears sufficiently, as we have often said, that the *Ecclesiastical Annals* have been truncated by two years; for they insert no more than 99 consulships. Whence Zosimus is also wrongly accused of error there. From this point, moreover, the error of Scaliger, refuted above by us, is more validly rebutted: he who fixed the beginning of Diocletian in the year of Christ 287 or 288. Whence his twentieth year ends in 307 or 308, to which year from the twelfth of Severus, or 204 of Christ, there are 104 or 105 years, not 101, as Zosimus wrote, with Scaliger himself approving.
"During which, a mighty persecution." A grave sin has been committed here against the trustworthiness of history. For that persecution which was begun by Diocletian and Maximian, which indeed deserves to be called a "mighty persecution," neither lasted for twelve years, nor was it brought to an end by those emperors: for although for almost their entire reign Christians were treated with cruelty, as Baronius gathers from the Acts of various martyrs, this was, however, a certain skirmish and a rudiment of cruelty, which flared up toward the destruction of the whole Christian name through the death of a few martyrs and especially those from the military order. But the beginning of the more atrocious persecution is attributed in the nineteenth year of Diocletian by Eusebius, *Hist.* Book VIII, ch. 3, when in the month of March an edict was proposed concerning the subversion of the churches. Then another followed concerning the seizing of prelates and forcing them by all machines and tortures to the worship of idols; and thus, little by little, that force of a most foul tempest fell upon all Christians. The reason for all these things was, to Eusebius and other writers, not so hindered that men of even mediocre sharpness could not discern it. But Josephus Scaliger mixed and confused everything in a greater degree, while, connecting errors with errors, he gathers more absurd things from absurd principles. For since, as we have seen, opinion deceived him greatly regarding the epoch of Diocletian, a huge crop of hallucinations overflowed from it into the rest of the intervals which are joined with it. Which the reader will easily understand from us in this place.
In Book V *De emend. temp.*, page 467, chapter *On the persecution of Diocletian*, he placed this as the foundation of his argument: "In the nineteenth year of Diocletian, in the month of March, during the days of Easter, the churches were subverted by the edict of the emperors, according to the witness of Eusebius." From which he argues in this manner: "For Easter to fall in March, it could not happen unless the paschal limit...">
A had been in March. It could not therefore have happened in the first cycle, nor the third; it happened therefore in the second cycle." The paschal limit is March 25 in the year of Christ 305, the first feria, cycle of the sun 6. Wherefore on the same day they celebrated both the fourteenth and the Passover: which did not rarely happen in that time, before the Nicene decree. There is therefore an illustrious passage, by which we prove that before the Nicene canon the A *Pascha anastasimon* coincided with the limit. Then he says there is an error in Eusebius. For it did not happen in the first year of Olymp. 271, which indeed began from the second cycle, but in the same Julian year, from whose summer days the first year of Olymp. 271 began. And so the nineteenth year of Diocletian had not yet begun. For the month was lacking for the *Palilia*, whence comes the beginning of Diocletian. But in the *Animadversiones* for the year 2319, from the fact that the Antiochene year 251 in Eusebius’ *Chronicon* is B placed at the nineteenth of Diocletian, he concludes the year to be the Dionysian year of Christ 303, with golden number 19, cycle of the sun 4. But soon wavering and agitated, because Eusebius writes that this happened in the month of March, and at Easter, he seems to refer it to 304; indeed even to 305. But here, as in most other things, it happened to Scaliger that, by falsely attributing certain things to Eusebius, he might thus fabricate a kind of ghost with which he might join battle; for what he affirms Eusebius to say—that that edict was published in the month of March on the solemn day of Easter—Eusebius never wrote. For his words are these, lib. VIII, cap. 3: "This year was the nineteenth of the reign of Diocletian; the month of Dystrus. This might be called C March according to the Romans, in which, as the feast of the saving Passion was approaching, imperial edicts were published everywhere," etc. That year was the nineteenth of Diocletian, the month of Dystrus, which corresponds to the Romans' March. In which, as the feast of the saving Passion was approaching, imperial edicts had been posted everywhere.
False, therefore, is it that he says in lib. V *De emend.* that Eusebius wrote *tēs heortēs tou Pascha eiselaunousēs* ("as the feast of the Passover was approaching"), as if the Passover must necessarily have fallen in March. For he speaks of the solemn days of the Passion, or the paschal week, which is sometimes called "Passover," as we noted in the Profession of the faith, which exists at the end of the first volume. Whence, although Eusebius mentioned the name of Passover, it could not therefore necessarily be concluded that the feast itself occurred in the month of March, D especially since he wrote *eiselaunousēs*, that is, approaching, drawing near. In the fragments which were appended at the end of lib. VIII, in the edition of Rob. Steph., fol. 91, page 2, that same passage is conceived thus: "This year was the nineteenth of the reign of Diocletian, the month of Xanthicus, which might be called April according to the Romans." Here he asserts that that event happened in the month of April: namely, that the holy week took up some part of either month. This year was the year of Christ 302, cycle of the moon 17, of the sun 3, letter D, the Nicene paschal new moon, March 16. But in the time of Diocletian it perhaps still stuck in 17. Therefore the fourteenth of the Paschal March was the 29th, a Sunday, or the 30th, a Monday. Hence the beginning of the feast of the saving Passion. Nor indeed is it necessary, A what Scaliger boasts, that the Passover was celebrated on the very limit. But the feast itself fell on April 5. You see how egregiously all things agree, and stand outside of Scaliger’s traps: for Eusebius anticipated the beginning of Diocletian, and took his nineteenth year from the new moon of Nisan, or the paschal month: which indeed began from the *Palilia* of the year that we might wish to say, we could attribute to the year 303: in which the cycle of the moon 19, of the sun 4, letter C, the new moon fell on March 6: the fourteenth moon, March 19, feria 6, the Pascha March 21, if indeed according to the Jewish custom this year had not been an intercalary one, B and so the Passover had been celebrated before the equinox, as sometimes happened in those times. But it is truer that it happened in the year of Christ 302. Moreover, Eusebius joined the nineteenth year of Diocletian with the fourth year of Olymp. 270, not with the first of the 271st, as Scaliger thinks, namely at the number 2319. The fourth year of Olymp. 270 began in the year of the Julian period 5017, the Dionysian year of Christ 304, the Eusebian 306, as it is in the oldest editions, and also that of Pontacus. In the Scaligerian, however, 304. But besides the prochronism of one year, by which the Dionysian era precedes the Eusebian, another year is inserted, so that this year would be 306, which ought to be 305, the Dionysian indeed 304. And otherwise Eusebius represents the epoch of Diocletian one year too late; for he ascribes his first year to the 266th Olympiad C the first year, which began in the year of the Julian period 4998, of the Dionysian era 285; while it corresponds to the earlier, the third year of Olymp. 265 passing, three months before the beginning of the fourth. Whence the nineteenth year of Diocletian is compared with the third year of Olymp. 270, which should rather have been joined with the second. For this began in the year of Christ 302, three months having passed from the beginning of the nineteenth year of Diocletian. But we struggle in vain with the Eusebian years of Christ; which learned men rightly persuade us were inserted by copyists, not by Eusebius himself.
There remains the Antiochene year, which so troubles Scaliger. The beginning of the Antiochene era precedes the Dionysian era by 46 solid years. For it falls in the year of the Julian period 4666, D according to the later opinion of Scaliger in *Animadvers.* and *Isag. can.* Wherefore in the year of the Julian period 5015, the Dionysian year 302, began the year of the Antiochenes 350 from October; but 351 in the Dionysian year 303. Therefore the error of Eusebius is manifest as much in the era of Diocletian as in the Antiochene. The nineteenth year of Diocletian began in the Antiochene year 349 still passing, and after almost 6 months the year of the Antiochenes 350 began. There is therefore a prochronism of one year in Eusebius, who connects the year 351 with the nineteenth year of Diocletian.
To sum up, that horrible persecution of Diocletian began in the 18th year of his reign ending, or the 19th beginning from the Kalends of January or March, the Dionysian year 302. Whence Diocletian did not exercise it for more than two years; although by Galerius Maximianus and others of Diocletian's
successors, it was propagated for many years, that is, until 311, as Baronius opines. From which it is evident that our author erred, who claims that, under the reign of Diocletian, [they] occupied all twelve years of that reign, save one.
A Καὶ παύεται τῆς βασιλείας ὁ οὐιτρανίσας. "And he who has 'veteranised' ceases from his reign." In the year of Christ 304, in the consulships of the ninth [of Diocletian] and the eighth of Maximianus. Although both are recorded to have been consuls again in the year 308, unless the *Fasti* are faulty, which—how it happened—is superfluous to ask. And there could be various interpretations, which we do not dwell upon. Moreover, the word which Epiphanius uses, οὐιτρανίσας, is to be noted; it signifies nothing other than to take upon oneself a calling like that of veterans, and to retire; which term is hitherto lacking in the mixed-barbarian Onomasticons.
Τούτους τελευτήσαντος διαδέχεται. "Upon the death of these he succeeds." Eusebius’s *Chronicon* gives Constantine thirty years and ten months. But the same Eusebius in his *Life of Constantine*, bk. iv, c. 55, says he reigned thirty-two years, minus a few months, and had lived double that time. Socrates and Sozomen define his reign as thirty-one years, and his life as sixty-four. Jerome, in his supplement to the reign, counts thirty-one years, and sixty-six of life, which he translated from Eutropius. His death is noted with an undoubted mark in the year of Christ 337, the eleventh of the Kalends of June, on the very day of Pentecost, in the solar cycle 10, letter B, in the consulship of Felicianus and Titianus. Scaliger, however, errs, in that he denies he completed his thirtieth year; but that he reigned only twenty-nine solid years, with seven months and twenty-eight days, from the 8th of the Kalends of October. He sets the beginning of this, however, in the year of Christ 307. From which error the others concerning the origin of the indictions and the time of the Council of Nicaea have sprung, which are most depraved in his account; for it is certain that the Nicene Council was held in the year of Christ 325, in the consulship of Paulinus and Julianus, and in the same year, upon the completion of his twentieth year, Constantius celebrated his Vicennalia. Which would by no means have happened if he had only begun in the year of Christ 307. Socrates says that Constantine died in the second year of the 278th Olympiad; but that Constantius Chlorus died in the first year of the 271st Olympiad, on July 25th. Since, therefore, Constantine began his reign at the onset of the 271st Olympiad, and died upon the conclusion of the second year of the 278th Olympiad, he had not yet completed thirty years. B Yet Socrates attributes thirty-one [years] to him. Therefore, he falsely assigns the year of his death to the second year of the 278th Olympiad. In the year of Christ 337, or the 5050th of the Julian period, the year 1113 of Iphitus began, or the 279th Olympiad, before which Constantine died, at the conclusion of the fourth year of the Olympiad. C Since it seems it must be yielded to the others, that Constantine completed thirty-one years, with a few months excepted, so that his twenty-third year would have begun in that year 337, in which he died, it follows that his first year falls in the year of Christ 305, in which, from the summer days, the first year of the 271st Olympiad began; to which Socrates assigns the death of Constantius Chlorus. A panegyric spoken by an uncertain author to the Augusti Maximianus and Constantine signifies that Constantine, when he had obtained the reign in Britain upon the death of his father, was content with the title of Caesar, and abstained from the name of Augustus and Emperor, until, adopted as a son-in-law by Maximianus, he obtained the name of Augustus as well. "Whose," he says, "maturity is such that, when your father had left the empire to you, you were content with the title of Caesar, and preferred to wait for the same [man] who had declared him Augustus, to declare you so." Which happened in the second year after the death of Constantius. From which arises a double beginning for Constantine. Wherefore it is probable that Constantius Chlorus passed away in the year of Christ 305, at the beginning of the first year of the 271st Olympiad, as Socrates writes; and then Constantine, having been acclaimed Augustus and Emperor by the soldiers, nevertheless abstained from the title of supreme empire, until in the following year from Maximianus...
D Μαξιμιανὸς δὲ κακῷ μόρῳ. "But Maximianus, by an evil fate." He thought he was speaking of Maximianus Herculius, the colleague of Diocletian, and indeed Epiphanius should have; but what he narrates in this place happened to neither Maximianus, but to Maximinus. Greek writers very often confuse the two Maximians with each other, and with Maximinus. Which thing can frustrate even the most attentive reader. Diocletian and Maximianus Herculius create Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Maximianus Armentarius [as] Caesars; who, after their secession, became Augusti from Caesars. Galerius Maximianus appointed as the two Caesars the sons of his sisters, C. Galerius Maximinus, whom he placed over the Orient, and M. Aurelius Severus, to whom he entrusted the Occident. Severus Caesar, having been sent by Galerius Maximianus against Maxentius, was slain at Ravenna, says Eusebius in his *Chronicon*, Victor in the *Caesars*, and others. Maximianus Herculius, having resumed the empire, when he was plotting treachery against his son-in-law Constantine, was killed at Massilia, not Tarsus, as Zosimus writes. Galerius Maximianus, having most cruelly persecuted Christians, died with his genitals consumed, says Victor. Eusebius, in his eighth book, ch. 18 and 19, details at greater length the most disastrous death of this man and the divinely inflicted tortures. Galerius Maximinus, defeated by Licinius and seized by a dire plague, perished at Tarsus. See Eusebius, bk. ix, ch. 8. Where, regarding what Epiphanius says, ἐξεβολβήθη τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, he narrates it thus: "His eyes protrude, and falling out of their own sockets, leave him blind." There is therefore no doubt that it is a hallucination of Epiphanius, who attributes to Maximianus the colleague of Diocletian—that is, Herculius—what happened to Maximinus Daza, the son of the sister of Galerius Armentarius. These things we have gathered from Victor, Zosimus, Eutropius, Eusebius, and others.
Καταλείψας Λικίνιον καὶ Κωνστάντιον. "Leaving behind Licinius and Constantius." And yet he had said that Constantius had reigned for thirteen years with Diocletian and Maximianus. Which, just as it is hardly true, so it is false that those two, 'veteranising,' left behind as successors Licinius and Constantinus; for they substituted for themselves Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Maximianus: Licinius later, having been made Caesar by Galerius Maximianus, held the empire with Constantine, and with him was left by the dying Maximinus.