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ly after this meeting, we have evidence of St. Peter's preaching successively in Asia, Corinth, Rome, and Egypt; and it is to be presumed that St. John was not idle meanwhile, but preaching also either in the same parts or elsewhere, at the same time. Nor does it appear that either of these apostles was still at Jerusalem, A. D. 56, when St. Paul again visited it for the fifth time.

It would not follow from this fact, however, that the Virgin Mary in particular must have been still alive twenty-one or twenty-two years after the Ascension, A. Ď. 51 or 52. If she died about A. D. 44. fourteen years after the Ascension, she would still be sixty-three years old at her death; at least if the tradition alluded to elsewhere (Dissertation xvi. vol. ii. 88.) that she was fifteen or sixteen, at the time of the Annunciation, is founded in truth. The testimony of Arethas supposes her to have died a natural death. It knows nothing then of her fabled translation or assumption: which is so far an argument for its credibility. Confer the Extract from Modestus, bishop of Jerusalem, Photius, Codex 275, p. 511. 1. 30.

There is no reason to suppose that any apostle, and much less the apostle St. John, had preached at Ephesus, before the beginning of St. Paul's residence there, A.D. 53. I should consider it very improbable even that any apostle had preached there, much more permanently taken up his abode there, up to the time of St. Paul's last Epistle to Timothy; written in the spring quarter of the year of his mar

VOL. III.

tyrdom, A.D. 66. On every account, the commencement of St. John's permanent residence at Ephesus, is to be dated later than the close of the personal history of St. Paul; as far as we have the means of tracing that history: though how much later, it may not be possible to say.

I should scarcely think it worth while to quote the Life of St. John by Symeon Metaphrastes, (Cf. Dorotheus, bishop of Tyre, apud Theophylact, i. 500,) as it abounds in fabulous particulars. Speaking of his examination before Domitian, and of his subsequent banishment to Patmos, Symeon is silent about the fact of his being previously thrown into the caldron of boiling oil. He asserts the composition of his Gospel in Patmos.

We may here add, that the supposed Epistle of Dionysius the Areopagite, Operum ii. 178, 179. Epistolæ, x. though it professes to be addressed to St. John, at that time in banishment, and residing in Patmos, throws no light on any of the above questions. It concludes with predicting merely his future restoration to liberty; a prediction for the credibility of which the writer claims to be considered an adequate voucher: ἀξιόπιστος δὲ πάντως εἰμὶ τὰ προεγνωσμένα σοι ἐκ Θεοῦ καὶ μαθὼν καὶ λέγων, ὅτι καὶ τῆς ἐν Πάτμῳ φυλακῆς ἀφεθήσῃ, καὶ εἰς τὴν ̓Ασιατίδα γῆν ἐπανήξεις, καὶ δράσεις ἐκεῖ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ Θεοῦ μιμήματα, καὶ τοῖς μετὰ σὲ παραδώσεις.

Maximus, in his Scholia on this Epistle, pp. 180, 181, institutes a calculation to prove that Dionysius was then about ninety years old; proceeding on the Tt

supposition that he was twentyfive, in the eighteenth of Tiberius, when he observed the miraculous darkness (of which we have the account in the Epistle to Polycarp, Operum ii. 88. Epistolæ, vii. Cf. Dissertation xiv. vol. i. 468, 469.) and that this Epistle to St. John was written sixty-four years and seven months afterwards, in the last year of Domitian: such being the interval between the eight

eenth of Tiberius, A. D. 32. a vere, and the last year of Domitian, A. D. 96. ab auctumno. He quotes Irenæus and Clemens Alexandrinus, (locis citatis) to the fact of the banishment of St. John to Patmos in the reign of Domitian. Pachymeres, too, in his paraphrase of the Epistle, p. 184, supposes St. John banished about the last of Domitian, and released from exile in the first of Nerva.

APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION XIV.

On the date of the battle of Pharsalia.

Vide Dissertation xiv. vol. i. page 524. last line of note.

IT is not a new opinion that Cæsar reformed the calendar by the introduction of sixty-seven, and not of eighty-nine days. The same hypothesis was maintained by Guischard, in his controversy with De Lo-Looz ; and he has arranged the chronology of the intermediate period between the commencement of the civil war, U. C. 705, and the death of Cæsar, U. C. 710; in conformity to it".

It is observable, however, that while this gentleman supposed the battle of Pharsalia to have been fought on the ninth of August in the unrectified year; he placed the death of Pompey on the twenty-ninth of September in the same. This was to introduce between the two events an interval of forty-nine or fifty days: a supposition too improbable to be for a moment entertained. The testimony of history is unanimous to the effect that the death of Pompey ensued upon the battle, with as little delay as the circumstances of the case would admit. A fortnight's interval is the utmost which can be supposed between these two events; an interval of six or seven weeks is altogether incredible.

The proof of this assertion may be easily made out, if the reader will give me leave to trace the course of proceedings, from the time when Cæsar took the field against Pompey, with a little more minuteness than I a Vide the Preface to Oberlinus's Cæsar, page x.

before considered to be necessary: assuming only that U. C. 706, the year of the battle, was an ordinary intercalary year; and consequently that the nominal dates which occur before the proper time of the intercalation in that year, are sixty-seven days in advance of the true, and after it, are forty-four or fortyfive.

Pridie nonas Januarias, Cæsar set sail from Brundisium; that is, January 4, in the year of Numa, U. C. 706; but October 29, in the rectified Julian year, U. C. 705.

Jamque hiems adpropinquabat; viz. longo interposito spatio, after his arrival on the opposite coast. This would be nominally February, U. C. 706, really December, U. C. 705.

Pompeius.. iter in hiberna.. habebat; that is at Dyrrhachium. Cæsar also was preparing sub pellibus hiemared, at the same place. We will suppose this was nominally the end of February, U. C. 706; but really the end of December, U. C. 705. The commencement of the winter season, that is, the ingress of the brumal quarter, which the rectified calendar dates from December 25, will coincide with this point of time.

After this, Multi jam menses transierant, et hiems jam præcipitaverat; yet Cæsar had not been joined by his troops from Brundisium. Præcipitaverat means here, had drawn to a close; as præcipitat in Virgil, means, is drawing to a close:

Et jam nox humida cœlo
Præcipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos *.

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So Ovid, Tristium i. iii. 47.

Jamque moræ spatium nox præcipitata negabat,

Versaque ab axe suo Parrhasis Arctos erat.

Servius, Ad Georgic. i. 43: Nam anni quatuor sunt tempora, divisa in ternos menses: qui ipsorum temporum talem faciunt discretionem: ut primo mense Veris novum dicatur Ver: secundo, adultum : tertio, præceps. sicut etiam Sallustius dicit ubique: nova æstas, adulta, præceps. sic Autumnus novus, adultus, præceps. item Hyems nova, adulta, præceps vel extrema *f.

Many months cannot well denote less than three or four since Cæsar first set out; which, combined with the signification of præcipitaverat, must imply that the spring quarter was arrived, or at hand. If U. C. 706, therefore, was intercalary, the course of events since Cæsar's departure from Brundisium, is brought nominally to the end of the intercalary month Merkedonius at least, if not into the ensuing March.

It makes in favour of this conclusion that the same chapter tells us, Sæpe flaverant venti, quibus necessario committendum existimabat. These winds would be south, or south-west, the time of whose blowing was commonly the beginning of spring 5. When An

304, stands as follows: onpa dé τοι κείνης ὥρης καὶ μηνὸς ἐκείνου, | Σκορπίος ἀντέλλων εἴη πυμάτης ἐπὶ VUKTÓS. Again, loco citato, Nam Canis infesto sequitur vestigia cursu, Præcipitantem agitans oriens. Where also the Phænomena, 339, has, avràp oy' aieì | Σείριος ἐξόπιθεν φέρεται μετιόντι ἐοικὼς, | καί οἱ ἐπαντέλλει, καί μιν κατιόντα διώκει. In another passage of the same Fragmenta, 1.348, the verb is used actively with its proper case: Quæ simul existant cernes, quæ tempore eodem

f Cf. ad Æneid. iii. 8: v. 295.

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