Technical Chronology and Astrological History in Varro, Censorinus and Others
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9664003 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anthony Grafton (Princeton University, corresponding author), A T Grafton, N M Swerdlow (University of Chicago) |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 454-465 |
| Publication date | 1985-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0009838800040295 |
| OpenAlex | W2093111586 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 28 |
| References cited | 3 |
Technical chronology establishes the structure of calendars and the dates of events; it is, as it were, the foundation of history, particularly ancient history. The chronologer must know enough philology to interpret texts and enough astronomy to compute the dates of celestial phenomena, above all eclipses, which alone provide absolute dates. Joseph Scaliger, so we are told, was the first to master and apply this range of technical skills: Of the mathematical principles on which the calculation of periods rests, the philologians understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology. So Mark Pattison. This verdict can be challenged on a number of grounds. The one relevant at present is simple: Scaliger himself claimed far less. He certainly said that technical chronology had been untouched in modern times — not an entirely fair judgement — but in antiquity it had been practised in exactly the manner he considered proper, or so he believed. In particular he singles out Censorinus, whose De die natali drew extensively on Varro's lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum , books 14–19, for information on chronology. Students of Varro have long appreciated the importance of Censorinus. His dry and compact treatise offers Varronian views on etymology, the human life-span, and the course of history itself, all couched in language so jejune as to suggest that he added little or nothing to what he read
Archaeology · Art · Chronology · Epistemology · Etymology · Judgement · Literature · Nothing · Philology · Classics · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy
Some Uses of Eclipses in Early Modern Chronology
Censorinus
Political history, 146–95 b.c.
Religion
The development of Roman private law
Egypt, 146–31 b.c.
Economy and society, 133–43 b.c.
The Roman empire and its problems in the late second century
The Senate and the populares , 69–60 b.c.
The aftermath of the Ides
Lucullus, Pompey and the East
The city of Rome and the plebs urbana in the late Republic
The fall of the Roman Republic
The rise of Pompey
Caesar, Pompey and Rome, 59–50 b.c.
The crisis of the Republic
The intellectual developments of the Ciceronian age
The administration of the empire
Sulla
Rome and Italy
Marcus Terentius Varro
Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800
The Cambridge Ancient History
Diodore de Sicile, les mythes du déluge et « le livre des îles »
Celestial Inclinations
Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Roman chronology
The Birthday Present
Writing the History of the New World into Universal History
| Unique citing works | 28 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,88 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2023 (30) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 27 |