- Synchronizing Times I: Greece and Rome
(see figure 4). In 70 c.e.the Jewish column disappears with Titus’s capture of
Jerusalem, so that for the years 73 – 78 c.e.(see figure 5), there is only one column
on each page, Romanorum,the column of Roman time. Now there is only one time
line left for the whole of the known world, the time line of the Roman Empire,
which was to be perfected into a Christian empire in the lifetime of the original
author, Eusebius.^110 This is, as it were, a graphic inverse image of the way that the
early Roman annalistic tradition mushrooms as it assimilates more and more of the
world, so that the year-by-year history of a single city becomes a way of narrating
the history of the entire world. P[alce Fgiures 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 near here.]
AULUS GELLIUS’S SYNCHRONISTIC
CHAPTER: A PARADIGM CASE
These Christian developments would have astounded and dismayed our cheerful
pedant Gellius, who would have heard of Christians and perhaps even seen some,
Figure2.
Jerome ’s Chroniclefor the years 106 – 93 b.c.e., with the four remaining time columns
taking up one page of the codex. Helm 1956, 148 – 49.