We must now examine more minutely the notice of Christ’s birth given us in this document. It runs as follows: _I p. Chr. Cæsare et Paulo sat. XIII. Hoc cons. Dns. ihs. XPC natus est VIII. Kal. Jan. de ven. luna XV._[308] Which means, Christ was born during the consulship of C. Cæsar Augustus and L. Æmilius Paulus (754 U.C.), on the 25th December, which was a Friday, on the fifteenth day of the new moon. This notice gives rise to several questions. First of all the Epact is not correct, as according to our tables it ought to be 11.[309] But this need not detain us, as two or three peculiarities of this kind are to be met with in this list of the consuls. The error concerning the day of the week is more important. To expose this error we need only give the dominical letters for the years in question:— 751 U.C., Dom. let. F = 25th Dec., Wednesday. 752 U.C., ” E = ” Thursday. 753 U.C., ” DG = ” Saturday. 754 U.C., ” B = ” Sunday. The compiler of this chronology might have set down the birth of Christ in either 754 or 753 U.C. 754 is a possible year, although the 25th December 753 is more probable, yet in either case the day of the week would be wrong. In 752, the 25th December fell on Thursday, but since 753 was a leap year, the dominical letter advances two places, and Friday is passed over. At the same time, there has been a fairly constant tradition that the 25th of December fell on a Wednesday in the year of Christ’s birth. In any case, the notice that the 25th December fell, in this year, on a Friday is based on a mistaken reckoning. This notice, then, does not represent a tradition, but is merely the result of a calculation which unfortunately is incorrect. Consequently the whole interpolation is undeserving of credit. We now pass on to a second point. While all writers before 354 fix the year of Christ’s birth by the year of the Emperor’s reign, here, for the first time, it is fixed by the year of the consuls. This is a marked departure from the original usage. The forty-first or forty-second year of Augustus correctly converted into a consular year would have run: _Augusto XIII. et Silvano conss._ or _Lentulo et Messalino_, which would also be the year 751 or 752 U.C., according as the year of the emperor is taken as “_effektiv_” or not, _i.e._ according as one places Christ’s birth in the first or second half of the year.[310]