Dating Creation - Greek and Roman

Greek and Roman

Most ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers, poets, grammarians and scholars (Eratosthenes, Varro, Apollodorus of Athens, Ovid, Censorinus, Catullus, and Castor of Rhodes) believed in a threefold division of history: ádelon (obscure), mythikón (mythical) and historikón (historical) periods. According to the Roman grammarian Censorinus the first period, the ádelon (obscure), was calculated by Varro as follows:

The first (period) stretches from the beginning of mankind (the creation) to the first cataclysm .

The primordial ádelon (obscure) period ended with the flood of Ogyges and what followed was the beginning of the mythikón (mythical) period. Varro dated this flood to 2137 BC but Censorinus wrote in his De Die Natali ch.xxi that the Ogyges’ diluvium occurred 1600 years before the first Olympiad (776 BC) meaning 2376 BC. Castor of Rhodes also provided another date for the start of the mythikón (mythical) period, 2123 BC. Censorinus recorded that the second period, the mythikón, stretched from the flood of Ogyges to the fist Olympiad:

The second stretches from the first cataclysm to the first Olympiad; because many myths are recorded in it, it is called “mythical”.

So according to Censorinus (quoting Varro), the second period (mythikón) lasted from 2137 to 776 BC, or if Censorinus' own dates are used: 2376 BC to 776 BC, or finally if Castor's: 2123 BC to 776 BC. Ovid, however, dated the start of the (mythikón) period to the reign of Inachus, who he dated 400 or so years after the flood of Ogyges, meaning around 1900–1700 BC, but agreed with Varro that the mythikón ended during the first Olympiad (776 BC). See Ages of Man for more details about Ovid's chronology. Another ancient date for the start of the mythikón (mythical) period is found preserved in Augustine's City of God xviii.3, which dates it to 2050 BC. The final period according to Censorinus and Varro, the historikón (historical) era, began from 776 BC (the first Olympiad) to their own time:

The third stretches from the first Olympiad to us. Because the events in it are contained in true histories, he calls it “historical.”

Eratosthenes and Apollodorus of Athens, however, pushed back the start of the historical period to the Trojan War, which they fixed at 1184 BC.

Very few ancient Greeks or Romans attempted to date the creation, or beginning of the ádelon (obscure) period. While all ancient sources (excluding Ovid) dated the end of this period and start of the mythical (mythikón) period to 2376–2050 BC, most did not claim to know when the creation (ádelon period) exactly began. As Censorinus admitted:

If the origin of the world had been known to man, I would have begun there.

Varro and Castor of Rhodes also wrote something very similar; however, some ancient Greek and Romans attempted to calculate the date for the creation by using ancient sources or records of mythological figures. Since Inachus was dated 400 years after the flood of Ogyges and that Ogyges himself was considered a Titan or a primordial Autochthon "from earliest ages", some ancient Greek or Romans dated the creation (beginning with Chaos or Gaia) only a few hundred years before Ogyges (2376–2050 BC). Most ancient Greeks, however, did not subscribe to such a literalist view of using mythology to attempt to date the creation; Hecataeus of Miletus was an early ancient Greek logographer who strongly criticised this method, while Ptolemy wrote of such an "immense period" of time before the historical period (776 BC), and thus believed in a much greater age for the creation.

Among the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers there were different opinions and traditions pertaining to the date of the creation. Some philosophers believed the Universe was eternal, and actually had no date of creation, while Plutarch recorded a tradition among the Roman sages in Tuscany that the world was re-created every 25,868 years.