Orosius Calendars
Fear (2010:18) described
Chronological Systems used by Orosius.
Given his wish to show that secular events prove the truth of Christianity, it is perhaps not surprising that Orosius uses the common chronological systems of his day rather than one centred on the incarnation. Such a system was not in fact available: the universal Christian chronology used today was devised some 100 years after Orosius’s death by Dionysius Exiguus.105 However, it is noticeable that Orosius chooses not to date events from the birth of Abraham, as does Eusebius/Jerome’s Chronicle. Rather, prior to the foundation of Rome, Orosius dates events by Olympiads. He then uses, as was common in Roman historiography, the date of Rome’s foundation as the starting point for his chronology.106 Orosius dates the foundation of Rome to 752 years before the birth of Christ, a year which fell in the sixth Olympiad and 414 years after the fall of Troy.107 The date of the foundation of Rome was subject to some dispute in antiquity. The commonest accepted date was that posited by the late republican scholar Varro – 754/3 BC. However, Orosius’s date has official sanction in that it is that which was used by the Capitoline Fasti, the official list of Roman magistrates erected in the forum at Rome, and it may be for this reason that he chose it, as it would once again link his account of the Roman past with the ‘official’ version of the day.