- Synchronizing Times I: Greece and Rome
Punic War (“218 – 201 b.c.e.”), but he carries on for a hundred years past this
declared terminus, ending with the death of the poet Lucilius. It is in keeping with
his usual carefully cultivated air of amateurism that he should meander on past his
announced end point, just as he throws in the dates of Homer and Hesiod at the
beginning with apparent artlessness (3), even though they predate his starting
point of the foundation of Rome. But the transgression is very pointed, for, by car-
rying on to Lucilius, Gellius is able to end the essay with a catalogue of Roman lit-
erary figures (Cato, Plautus, Ennius, Caecilius, Terence, Pacuvius, Accius, and
Lucilius, 46 – 49). He feels able to conclude the essay, in other words, only when he
has reached a point in time where Rome has established some kind of record in the
domain of literature, and this is plausible only a long time after the Hannibalic
Wa r.^112
An insistent theme of the entire essay is the late arrival of literature, or of any
kind of intellectual culture, in Rome. Gellius derives this perspective above all
Figure3.
Jerome ’s Chroniclefor the years 48 – 45 b.c.e., showing three time columns.
Helm 1956, 156.