flood till the institution of the Olympic games, and this he called the fabulous age. From that date the Greeks pretend to digest their history with some degree of order and clearness. Varro, therefore, looked on it as the break of day, or commencement of the historical age. The chronology, however, of those events which occurred at the beginning of this second period, is as uncertain and confused as of those which immediately preceded it. Thus, the historical æra is evidently placed too high by Varro. The earliest writers of history did not live till long after the Olympian epoch, and they again long preceded the earliest chronologers. Timæus, about the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, was the first who digested the events recorded by these ancient historians, according to a computation of the Olympiads(75). Preceding writers, indeed, mention these celebrated epochs, but the mode of reckoning by them was not brought into established use for many centuries after the Olympic æra. Arnobius farther informs us, that Varro calculated that not quite 2000 years had elapsed from the Ogygian flood to the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa. The building of Rome he placed two years higher than Cato had done in his _Origines_, founding his computation on the eclipse which had a short while preceded the birth of Romulus; but unfortunately this eclipse is not attested by contemporary authors, nor by any historian who could vouch for it with certainty. It was calculated a long time after the phænomenon was supposed to have appeared, by Tarrutius Firmanus, the judicial astrologer, who amused himself with drawing horoscopes. Varro requested him to discover the date of Romulus’s birth, by divining it from the known events of his life, as geometrical problems are solved by analysis; for Tarrutius considered it as belonging to the same art, (and doubtless the conclusions are equally certain,) when a child’s nativity is given to predict its future life, and when the incidents of life are given to cast up the nativity. Tarrutius, accordingly, having considered the actions of Romulus, and the manner of his death, and having combined all the incidents, pronounced that he was conceived in the first year of the second Olympiad, on the 23d of the Egyptian month Choiok, on which day there had been a total eclipse of the sun. Pompey, when about to enter for the first time on the office of Consul, being ignorant of city manners and senatorial forms, requested Varro to frame for him a written commentary or manual, from which he might learn the duties to be discharged by him when he convened the Senate. This book, which was entitled _Isagogicum de Officio Senatus habendi_, Varro says, in the letters which he wrote to Oppianus, had been lost. But in these letters he repeated many things on the subject, as what he had written before had perished(76).