was local than we now remember. Music, for example, had localized standards. Any
European town might have a different pitch for A from the next town, keyed to the
organ in the local church (my thanks to Magen Solomon for this parallel).
Note how he continues: “We should not wonder at the inconsistency of the
days, since even now, when astronomical matters have been made more exact, differ-
ent people mark a different beginning and end of the month.” Cf. Rom.12.2, where he
says that “even now the Roman months have no agreement with the Greek ones.”
As noted at the end of the preface, the quotation marks enclosing “384 b.c.e.”
mean that this date corresponds to what we call 384 b.c.e.
My thanks to my colleague Tom Hare, who supplied me with this example, and
to Stephen Young, for alerting me to the Asian parallel; cf. Greenway 1999, 129, for an
example from Anglo-Saxon England.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge and recommend the indispensable work of my
colleague Tony Grafton on Joseph Scaliger, who is usually hailed as the father of mod-
ern synchronistic studies, and, in consequence, as the father of modern historical
scholarship (not that this is quite the picture that emerges from Grafton [1993]). Con-
tested synchronisms are only just beneath the surface of our apparently uniform pic-
ture of preclassical ancient history. Synchronism with Egpyt underpins the entire dat-
ing systems of the Near Eastern and Greek world down to the end of the Dark Age: if
the Egyptian dates are out, then so are all the others, and there was no “Dark age” after
all: see James et al. 1991. On synchronism in general, Momigliano 1977a, 51; 1977b,
192 – 93; Asheri 1991 – 92.
A point eloquently argued by Shaw (2003); cf. Wilcox 1987.
Asheri 1991 – 92, 52 (a fundamentally important study of synchronism, to
which I am much indebted); cf. Gell 1992, 28, making the crucial related point that
objects do not have dates, only events.
Stern 2003, 21; my thanks to David Levene for referring me to this important
study. Leibniz is the first modern to propound this approach, according to Whitrow
1989, 129; as Whitrow points out, Epicureanism anticipates him (58 – 59, citing Lucr.
1.459 – 63).
Damasio 2002, 71; cf. Gell 1992, 159, making the identical claim, but moving
from the philosophy of time toward an anthropological perspective; cf. also Zerubavel
2003, 40, for the manufacturing of contiguity between isolated moments of time.
Aveni 1989, 121; Greenway 1999, esp. 138 – 39.
Twain 1968 (1883), 389, quoted by Zerubavel (2003, 90), who remarks: “In
marking significant historical breaks, ‘watersheds’ often serve as extremely effective
chronological anchors” (original emphasis).
Wodehouse 1987 (1947), 70.
26.povsa toi e[teÆ ejstiv, fevriste;ƒphlivko" h\sqÆ, o{qÆ oJ Mh'do" ajfivketo; DK 21 B 22.5.
Cf. Shaw 2003, 23, on the way that Thucydides follows “the practice, current before
notes to pages 10 – 13