It illustrates the truth of both these observations, that the news of Tiberius' triumph, January 16, U. C. 765, did not reach Ovid at Tomi, before the autumnal quarter of the same year. 1 Macc. viii. 19, it is called a very great journey from Judæa to Rome. From Socrates, E. H. ii. xx. 102. A. it appears that a year and six months was not thought too long an interval, within which to notify to the bishops of the East, the holding of a council at Serdica, in Illyricum, and to bring them thither by the time appointed, A. D. 347. Chrysostom was seventy days in making the journey from Constantinople to Cucusus, the place of his banishment, on the borders of Armenia Minor and Cilicia Campestris, under Mount Amanus. Yet he had but to travel along Asia Minor, from west to east, and he made the journey in the middle of the summer: Vide Operum iii. 729. B. Epistola 234. The body of Theodosius, who died at Milan, January 17, A. D. 395, did not arrive at Constantinople, in order to be buried there, before November 8. in the same year; nor the army, which had accompanied Theodosius into Italy, before November 27: Socrates, E. H. v. xxvi. 295. C. and vi. i. 299. D. 300. A. If any one will take the trouble to follow the journey of Paula from Rome to Jerusalem, as related by Jerome, Opera, iv. Pars 2da, 672 ad princip.: it will appear that though she set out, exacta hyeme, aperto mari; and travelled by the usual route, without being detained, as far as can be collected from the account, except for ten days at Cyprus, yet it was media hyeme that she departed from Antioch for Judæa. Lastly, with regard to my assertion, (page 306. vol. i.) that the journey from Judæa to Rome, even in the summer time, would require an interval of six weeks and upwards, I shall conclude these citations with the following passage from Theodorit: In Coloss. ii. 17: Operum iii. 489. Καλῶς δὲ προστέθεικε καὶ τὸ ἐν μέρει ἑορτῆς. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἠδύναντο ταύτας πληροῦν. πῶς γὰρ οἷόν τε ἦν τρὶς τοῦ ἔτους ἀπὸ τῆς Φρυγίας εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν τρέχειν, ἵν ̓ ἐν τοῖς Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐπιτελέσωσι κατὰ τὸν νόμον τὰς ἑορτὰς, καὶ μάλιστα τῆς πεντηκοστῆς πελαζούσης τῷ πάσχα; πλειόνων γάρ ἐστιν ἢ πεντήκοντα ἡμερῶν ὁδός. That this computation is no exaggerated statement, may be fairly collected from what is asserted by Evagrius, E. H. i. iii. 258. D. 259. A. respecting the distance of Ephesus in particular from Antioch; which he estimates at as nearly as possible thirty days' journey. The regular course of the journey from Ephesus to Jerusalem by land would lie through Antioch. The remark in question occurs with reference to the absence of the bishop of Antioch from the council of Ephesus, A. D. 431. The case of this bishop, and the time taken up by his journey from his own see to the place of the meeting of the council, is an instance in point. The council condemned Nestorius, June 28. A. D. 431. according to Socrates, E. H. vii. xxxiv. 377. B; and John, bishop of Antioch, with his suffragans, according to Evagrius, i. v. 260. B. did not arrive until five days after: though according to the same authority, i. iii. 259. A. they had made such haste to set out immediately after Easter, that they had not stayed to celebrate τὴν καλουμένην νέαν κυριακὴν, in their respective sees and churches. The véa KUριakη in question denotes the first Sunday after Easter: see the Annotations of Valesius, in loco. It seems, then, that John and his suffragan bishops had set out before the first Sunday after Easter. The council was appointed to meet at Pentecost; and actually did so yet John and his bishops did not arrive until five days after the condemnation of Nestorius, according to Evagrius, and fifteen days after the time appointed for the meeting of the council, according to the same authority, i. iv. 259. B. They had consequently been eight or nine weeks on the road. It is observable in particular, that Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, according to Socrates, vii. xxxiv. 376. B. arrived five days after Pentecost: so that, even supposing him to have set out in the second week after Easter, he had yet been six weeks on the road. An instance indeed occurs in Procopius, De Bello Persico, in which the period of seventy days was appointed for the going and returning of a messenger from the banks of the Tigris near Nisibis, to Byzantium. But this was in the case of an ambassador carrying proposals of peace from the Persian king, Chosroes, to the Roman emperor Justinian; who would travel with proportionably greater dispatch. See Procopius, De Bello Persico, i. 22. 111. 1. 3–112. 1. 11, 12: 19, 20. Nisibis was but two days' journey distant from the Tigris: see cap. 11. p. 54. l. 17. APPENDIX. DISSERTATION IX. On the natural or physical Notices of Time, supplied by the Gospel Histories. Vide Dissertation x. vol. i. page 366. line 7. IN any historical work which might omit to specify the times of particular events, one of the simplest and most obvious methods of supplying this defect, would be by the help of allusions to the usual phenomena of nature, which we know to be restricted to certain seasons of the year; were any such to be met with therein. For example, it is not stated by Thucydides in what month of the Attic year the first invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians took place; but it is mentioned that they entered the country, τοῦ σίτου ἀκμάCOVTOS a, that is, when the corn was ripe, or beginning to ripen. The time of the invasion then is determined to the spring quarter of the year and if we knew that the grain in Attica was commonly ripe in such and such a month; July for example or August; we might infer that the invasion took place in May or June. In like manner, when we read in the book of Exodus", that the flax and the barley were both destroyed by the plague of hail, because the barley was in the ear and the flax was bolled, but that the wheat and the rie were not smitten, because they were still in the blade, or as some commentators understand it, still in a ii. 19. Cf. iv. Ι. περὶ σίτου ἐκβολήν: on which Suidas Σίτου, observes, Καὶ σί. του ἐκβολὴν Θουκυδίδης, ὅταν ὁ στάχυς τῆς κάλυκος ἐκφύηται, οὐχ ὅταν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀναδιδῶται τὰ σπέρματα. b Exod. ix. 31, 32. the ground; the time of this plague, we might collect, was about the period of the vernal equinox; by which time the flax and the barley in Egypt, if not fully ripe, are commonly in a very forward state. Again, when the spies on their return from searching the land of Canaan, brought with them a ripe bunch of grapes, and other autumnal fruits; this fact too is sufficient to prove that the Israelites approached the borders of Canaan, on the first occasion, forty days before the beginning of the autumnal quarter, at least. But it is unnecessary to multiply instances of a similar kind. The determination of the date of the celebrated battle of Pharsalia turns mainly on the decision of this question; viz. at what time the corn was usually ripe in Thessaly. I will observe only that the distinction of the course of events into summers and winters, for the purpose of history, is not only one of the most ancient modes of distributing time, but one which continued to be observed long after the origin of regular history. Pausanias informs us that Rhianus, the poetical historian of the second Messenian war, expressed its duration by so many summers and winters; and even Thucydides, though writing at a period of great refinement, still makes use of this simple and natural method, for distinguishing and arranging chronologically the events of the Peloponnesian war. A narrative like that of our Saviour's ministry, which descends so minutely into particulars of everyday occurrence, could scarcely fail to contain occasional notices of these ordinary phenomena of nature; which, if they were sufficiently numerous to be collected into one body, and sufficiently independent of each other, c Numbers xiii. 23. Ο οὔρεος ἀργεννοῖο περὶ πτύχας ἐστρατόωντο, Messeniaca, lib. iv. 17. |