been in use, the United States might well have continued using the era count that doc-
uments from the early Republic employ. Robert Knapp kindly supplies me with this
information: “Some official documents from those early years make reference to the
number of years of U.S. independence, with 1776 being regarded as the first year of
independence. This is in addition to the Common Era date affixed to these documents.
The official texts of U.S. treaties with Algiers (1816), Spain (1821), and Mexico (1826)
are a few examples of this practice.”
Cic. Brut.13 – 15; RESuppl. 8.520 – 21; Münzer 1905.
Münzer 1905, esp. 84 – 85.
We should remember, after all, that Gellius’s book is called Noctes Atticae,
“Attic Nights”; he represents himself as writing up the notes that he started taking
when he was in Athens.
82.RESuppl. 6.1237 – 42; Rawson 1985, 244 – 46; Grafton and Swerdlow 1985.
Rawson 1985, 245.
Varro’s Imagineswere much shorter, accompanying portraits: see Horsfall
1982a, 291; 1989b, 11; Rawson 1985, 198 – 99. On Nepos, see also Geiger 1985. Dion-
isotti 1988, 38, has interesting speculation on the newly topical relevance for Nepos of
the comparison between the strife offifth-century Greek history and the impending
chaos of his own times.
Cf. Rawson 1985, 231: “What is perhaps most important about both Varro’s and
Nepos’s works is that for the first time Greek and Roman subjects are placed together
on a level”; cf. Horsfall 1989b, 102: “What the two works have in common is compar-
ison of famous Greeks and Romans by category on a huge scale.” Geiger 1985, 72, well
situates Nepos’s work in general within a period including Catullus and Cicero, one
that saw “a concentrated attempt to bring Latin literature up to par with Greek.”
As Nicholas Horsfall put it to me, via e-mail.
On this two-edged nature of simile, see Lyne 1989, 135 – 48; Feeney 1992a. J. Z.
Smith (1990), chap. 2, “On Comparison,” is fundamental to the whole topic. Purcell
(2003, 20) compellingly makes the case that the comparison making of synchronism is
fundamental to history: “When two ancient communities tried to work out what they
had in common, and from what point they had shared this, history was invented. Thus,
synchronism was a far more vital instrument of historiography than differentiation —
or the delineation of the alien.” I would only stress that “differentiation” and “the
delineation of the alien” are integral to comparison, and hence to synchronism.
Jacoby 1902, 26 – 28; Leuze 1909, 166 – 67; Fraser 1972, 1:457 with 2:660 – 61; cf.
Gabba 1991, 198.
Fabian 1983; my thanks to James Ker for discussion of this point.
Modern histories of the ancient Mediterranean regularly further such focaliza-
tion, producing grand narratives in which “marginal” areas such as Sicily or central
notes to pages 23 – 25