From jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu Thu Mar 30 11:10:00 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id LAA14164 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:09:58 -0800 Received: from sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu [129.1.7.7]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id LAA10798 for ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:09:57 -0800 Received: from [129.1.87.31] ([129.1.87.31]) by sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (Lotus Domino Release 5.0.2b) with ESMTP id 2000033014040776:4842 ; Thu, 30 Mar 2000 14:04:07 -0500 X-Sender: jmpfund.bgsu@popj.bgsu.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 To: "classics@u.washington.edu" From: James Pfundstein Subject: Re: Upping the Ante Christ (was: BC(E) etc.) X-MIMETrack: Itemize by SMTP Server on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/30/2000 02:04:07 PM, Serialize by Router on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/30/2000 02:04:15 PM, Serialize complete at 03/30/2000 02:04:15 PM Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 14:04:07 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" [context follows] Actually, after a little rooting around, I'm going to go back to my harder position and say that Petavius had hardly any role in the B.C. calendar at all, except, possibly, as popularizer. Thomas Heywood wrote a long mythological grab-bag of a poem called *Troia Britanica or great Britaine's Troy* which begins with the creation of the world and, in marginal notes, dates major events with two systems: a year of the world (i.e., since creation) and B.C./A.D. The earliest date given is "The yeare of our Lorde [err. for "the world"] 1954; The yeare before Christ 2009": "Then liu'd Vranus a great Lord in Creet, To AEthra and great Demogorgon heire, He married with a Lady bright and sweet, Vesta through all those climes (sur-nam'd the faire) With two young lads she did her Husband greet, Tytan and Saturne, at two births she bare: Tytan the eldest, crooked, and il-fac't, Saturne well shap't, faire spoke, and comely grac't." Heywood's *Troia Britanica* was published in London in 1609. . See also Kelton, Arthur *Chronicle of the Brutes* (London, 1547) "Holy Eusebius, doth testifie Also sainct Bede, maketh mencion That noble Brute of the age, fiue and thirty Entered first into this region Whiche was before Christes incarnacion A thousand .i.C. twenty and twayne And after Troye .xliii. yeres playne." So it looks like the B.C. system was entrenched in England by the middle of the 16th C. at the latest, well before Petavius. JMP("Post Toasty") In a message dated 00-03-28 10:36:00 EST, JMP wrote: << Petavius may deserve credit for pulling the weeds and systematizing chronology so that it was possible to use one chronological system rather than twelve. That's a real achievement, but it's a rather narrower one than having invented the B.C. system. JM("Middle-Aged")P >> ************ Allen Koenigsberg replied: nothing emerges, full blown, from the head of Zeus anymore. What looks like a new invention always has antecedents - so with Petavius. I don't insist that Petavius get _all_ the credit - he's the last in a long line of "BC inventors", but a synthesizer of sorts who was necessary. I had always wondered, years ago, why AD was Latin and BC English. What say you? (I overlook my students who tell me that AD meant "after death.") Do we have a first citation of "BC" as such (literally)? I'm still willing to bet that it is from his English abridgement (as the term moved into popular use). ------------------ .