- Synchronizing Times I: Greece and Rome
maiorum.When Gellius, shortly afterwards (42), finally arrives at the beginning of
Roman literature, in “240 b.c.e.,” he puts enormous stress on how late this was in
comparison to Greece:
primus omnium L. Livius poeta fabulas docere Romae coepit post Sophoclis
et Euripidis mortem annis plus fere centum et sexaginta, post Menandri annis
circiter quinquaginta duobus.
The poet Lucius Livius was the very first to produce plays at Rome, more than
160 years after the death of Sophocles and Euripides, and about 52 years after
the death of Menander.This dating is not a synchronism; it is an anti-synchronism, highlighting just how
drastically the two cultures were not in harmony with each other. This is a text-
book example of the phenomenon that Zerubavel calls “inflating the divide be-
tween periods” — in 241 Rome has not got a literature; in 239, it has.^114 Gellius
Figure5.
Jerome ’s Chroniclefor the years 73 – 78 c.e., showing the only time column left, that of
Roman time. Helm 1956, 188.