37. The different years of the ancients
THE RECKONING OF TIME
¢nished, the Sun returns to all the places of the zodiac at the same time of day or night as it did four years previously.
The year of the wandering stars is that in which each of them lights up the circuit of the zodiac, of which /397/ we spoke above.333 The Great
Year is when all the planets return at one and the same time to the very places where they once simultaneously were.334 Josephus, describing the longevity of the earliest men in the ¢rst book of the Antiquities, speaks of this as follows: However, nobody who compares the life of the ancients to modern life and the brief span of years which we now live, would think what is said about them false, nor would they refuse to believe that they reached that length of life simply because such length of life has not extended [to our day]. They lived for so many years because they were pious men and fashioned by God; and because there existed at that time nourishment provided for them in advance, more apt, and for longer periods of time. Therefore, because of the virtues and glorious advantages which they constantly studied, that is, astronomy and geometry, God granted them a greater span of life. Now they would scarcely have been able to learn this had they not lived to be 600, for the Great Year completes its circuit in this many years.335
The Hebrews begin the civil year, that is, the solar year, from the spring equinox, the Greeks from the solstice, the Egyptians in the autumn, and the Romans in the winter.336
37. THE DIFFERENT YEARS OF THE ANCIENTS
So much for natural years; as for the rest, St Augustine teaches that ancient peoples of di¡erent nations erred in various ways as regards the observation of the year. /398/ In the 15th book of The City of God he argues against those who think that Holy Scripture has computed the years from the beginning of the world in a di¡erent way (that is, it is believed that [the years] were so short that one of our years equals ten of theirs [i.e. of the biblical writers]), and who say that when one hears or reads that someone lived 900 years, it ought to be understood as 90, for ten of our years is one of theirs, and ten of ours make 100 of theirs). He
333 Ch. 8.
334 Cf. ch. 6.
335 Josephus, Antiquitates 1.3.9, ed. Franz Blatt, The Latin Josephus (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958):136.24^137.2.
336 Isidore, DNR 6.2 (193.10^13).